The Ghost in You
by Star Charter
Summary: If Kuwabara hadn't wanted to live in a haunted apartment, he probably should've toured the place before putting his name on the lease. Alas, foresight was never his strong suit, and now he must learn to live alongside a rambunctious spirit—one whose unfinished business keeps her bound to the world of the living, not to mention the inside of Kuwabara's closet. [Kuwabara/OC]
1. Chapter 1: Until

Warnings: None

* * *

The Ghost in You

Chapter 01:

"Until"

* * *

Time is a concept relative, and a concept observable only in the presence of action.

Events mark time. Births and deaths, laughter and tears, beginnings and ends—these actionable transitions mark the flow of time and make the spaces between each happening as obvious as missing teeth.

For a being who sees nothing, and does even less, time simply does not matter.

 _It_ was one such being.

Time had ceased for It (It had forgotten all notion of gender even before It forgot the concept of time) long ago, though to It, "long" meant little indeed. In Its timeless state, It did not possess the wherewithal to act, or notice action, or react to action when the rare occasion called. Instead It simply… sat. It sat where It had always sat, and where It suspected (in that vague, distant part of Itself still capable of thought) It would always sit, inert, until time ended and even beings aware of time ceased to think about time at all. Until void swallowed It, snuffed out that last thinking flicker of Its consciousness like a wind snuffs a dying candle.

How long had It been there?

It had no way of knowing, and It lacked the ability to desire to find out.

If days turned to nights, It did not notice, for the sun on Its face held no warmth.

If families moved into and out of the place where It lived (wherever that was), It did not notice. The families did not notice It, either, and to It, the sounds of their voices were as wind in the trees.

And if trees grew, or were felled within Its hearing, neither did It notice these events, for the wind against Its form felt like so much shadow passing over numb, unfeeling skin.

Not that it remembered what wind on skin could feel like anymore, let alone what having skin felt like.

It did not know how to feel.

Colors were grey.

Sound was dull.

It could not eat.

It could not sleep.

It felt nothing.

It _was_ nothing.

This was Its reality, It half-thought.

This was _torture_ , though It lacked the vocabulary to name Its despair as such.

Thus, deeper into the nothing of despair It sank.

Soon It forgot how to think at all.

… _until._

* * *

NOTES

 _Happy Halloween._

 _This fic will update weekly on Saturdays for the duration of November 2018. Short chapters like this one (if there are any) will be posted between long chapters on Wednesdays. When November ends, the schedule will change; details forthcoming._

 _Thanks for reading; I'll see you with another (longer) chapter this Saturday, November 3._


	2. Chapter 2: Timeshare with a Dead Person

Warnings: None

* * *

The Ghost in You

Chapter 02:

"Timeshare with a Dead Person"

* * *

In retrospect, if Kuwabara hadn't wanted to live someplace haunted, he should've insisted on touring his new apartment before putting his name on the lease.

Too bad for him he'd been so desperate for a place to live, and the rent was so cheap, and the commute to school would be an absolutely _cakewalk_. Not an easy feat in the sprawling bulk of Tokyo. Only downside was no pets allowed, so Eikichi had to stay with Shizuru in Sarayashiki. Still, the price and commute were worth the weekend visits caused by Kuwabara's lack of foresight and frantic need for housing. "Logic is panic's prey," Kurama might have said. Kuwabara comforted himself with the knowledge that even Kurama, smart as he was, couldn't have seen this coming. Only a goshdarned seer could've predicted this, so it was just too bad Kuwabara's powers didn't let him see the future, y'know?

And seeing the future would be useful for more than just ghost avoidance. If his powers let him see the future, Kuwabara might've seen the breakup coming at the end of the summer. He might've gotten out of the house faster. Found an apartment near college sooner. Had time to tour his options and rule out all the haunted places, had more than two days to move out of his family's house (away from Shizuru, and away from _her_ ) before the start of school. He certainly would've had more warning than the single letter she'd left on his desk before he found her sitting at the breakfast table, coffee turned to literal ice in her snowy hands, unable to look at him, and—

His powers did not manifest in the form of psychic foresight.

His powers gave him a sword and spiritual awareness. That's all.

With said awareness he could sense things. A lot of things. Not things like impending breakups, of course, because that would be too dang useful, wouldn't it? Instead he sensed things like the ghost sitting at the bottom of the bedroom closet, curled up behind the mirrored sliding door like an emaciated stray dog, radiating dark and painful energy like an abscessed tooth in desperate need of dentistry.

As the movers left Kuwabara alone with _it_ , he put his hand to his head and sighed.

He had never been trained in exorcisms. Had thought about getting trained, sure, back before he'd learned to control his powers and shut out the nasty energies of grudging ghosts, but then came control, and out went the spirits keeping him up at night. He sensed a ghost? _Whoosh_. Psychic walls, blocking the creep-os from getting anywhere near his head. Said walls zoomed up the second he felt that malevolent spirit lingering in his bedroom… only he couldn't keep the walls up 24/7. He'd get tired. And since he lived here now, in this haunted-ass apartment, the ghost _un-living in his freaking closet_ would get to him eventually.

Peachy.

Just freakin' peachy.

He'd have to visit Genkai as soon as possible, get her advice on this. Too bad she lived so far away and he'd moved into Tokyo itself—way farther away from the temple than Sarayashiki, that's for sure. He'd have to commit a whole weekend to go see her, given his school schedule.

Until that day, then: walls.

For as long as he could hold them, at any rate.

* * *

Luckily for Kuwabara, the ghost did little more than lurk.

He'd seen a lot of ghosts in his day. Had started seeing them as a kid, getting side-eye from the unflappable Shizuru every time he flinched away from a clammy spectral hand or at the sound of a laugh like rattling bones. Shizuru had figured out her coping tricks before he was born, probably. Had probably figured out how to protect herself as a baby, or even in utero; Kuwabara wouldn't put it past her. Fighter she was not, but at sensing things she was even better than Kuwabara. If he moaned to her about the ghost in his closet, she'd just tell him to grow up.

And Kuwabara wasn't a kid anymore. He was twenty one, and that was a lot of years, and a lot of time to learn his own versions of Shizuru's tricks. A lot of time for goblins, ghosts, and ghouls to haunt his sleep and keep him awake at night, to force him to adapt and cope. Sleep paralysis out the whazoo, Tickle Feelings for _days_ —that sort of thing, day in and day out until the day he'd learned to shut 'em out. Most of the specters sensed his awareness and flocked, moths trying to leech light instead of merely admire it (and perhaps burn to a crisp doing so; Kuwabara wasn't so lucky as that, though). He was a tasty treat to ghosts, that was for sure.

Not this ghost, though.

This ghost apparently wasn't so keen on a Kuwabara-flavored snack, which was nice.

He went to bed the first night wary, wondering if he'd wake at 2 AM unable to move, paralyzed, the gaunt and black-eyed face of a specter staring at him nose to nose, weightless and yet an anchor on his chest—but that didn't happen. He had a stress dream, because he was stressed, but that was all. The ghost barely even cried at night (though it cried _some_ , because it was a ghost). Its minute sobs sounded as distant as forgotten dreams, whispering hiccups that could pass for the gurgle of pipes in the walls.

Too bad he knew better than to believe it was just the pipes.

But, wonder of wonders, by the time morning came, the ghost hadn't budged an inch. It stayed at the bottom of the closet (the closet he hadn't yet opened, clothes still sitting snug in their moving boxes) and ignored him even as he unpacked, hauled furniture around, cleaned his bathroom, and generally made the kind of ruckus most ghosts don't like.

It didn't get mad, though.

It just… sat there.

It just sat there feeling like a big black vortex of sadness and anger and _empty_ , hovering at the edges of his perception like…

Well.

Like a ghost.

Its aura was awful, yeah, but Kuwabara? He'd felt worse. A _lot_ worse. This one was nothing in comparison, and after a single afternoon in the apartment, he could almost tune its presence out.

In fact, the ghost wasn't even the creepiest thing in the house. A floorboard under the living room window had a big, warped knot in the wood, one that looked like a watching eye, and that was honestly more disturbing to look at than the ghost in the closet.

"Heh. You ain't so tough," Kuwabara muttered at the ghost when he next passed by his closet—but the ghost stirred at the sound of his voice, stretching with a creak of dusty energy, and Kuwabara scurried away.

He couldn't avoid it, forever, though.

Kuwabara managed to not open his closet door for an entire week. He covered the eye-shaped knot in the floor with an easy chair and threw his dirty clothes on top of it, for seven days avoiding the inevitable with practical application of his laundry. On day eight, however, he tripped over one of his boxes of clothes on the way to the toilet in the middle of the night. The pain in his foot told him what his brain did not want to admit: That closets are useful and should be used, even if they're on a timeshare with a dead person.

Kuwabara didn't sleep particularly well that night, but even so, the next day he stood in front of his closet and took a deep breath.

"OK," he said to his own reflection, bleary eyes and drooping hair and all. "OK, Kuwabara. It's just a ghost, and you've dealt with worse. Much worse." He squared his broad shoulders, taking comfort in the ripple of his muscular arms—even if they'd mean nothing against the raw power of a spirit. "Buck up. You're a badass. You got this."

Pep talk finished, he took another deep breath.

He grabbed the edge of the sliding door and pushed the panel along its clacking metal track.

He spotted the ghost at once, there, in the corner.

"OK," he said as a wash of cold, black energy—that un-life chill that made his heart feel like a candle in the face of a winter squall—splashed over his face. Kuwabara ignored it as best he was able and said, "OK, listen here. I live here now. I pay the rent. So unless you get a job and _contribute to this household_ , what I say goes. OK?"

The ghost (little more than a blob of shadow, jagged at the edges but too soft to touch, form caught halfway between Kuwabara's senses of sight and his sense of raw feeling) rippled. The center of the shadow solidified. Slimy black tendrils crept up the walls, matted and dripping ichor like hair clogging a drain. Out of the heart of the dark mass swam two eyes, wide and black and bloodshot, set in a face the color of moonlit bone. Below them opened a dark mouth. Gums empty and rotting, throat deep as an ocean trench, the ghost's throat worked—and then it _rattled_.

It was the rattle of the dying. Of the dead. It was death made audible, sound skittering down Kuwabara's spine like a deformed insect, icing his blood and prickling his skin with the raw cry of tortured not-life.

It was terrifying.

It was _horrible_.

Kuwabara slammed the closet door and booked it into the kitchen, where he drank two beers in quick succession and wolfed down half a loaf of bread. There was comfort in the solidity of food. Pretty sure that's how he got so damn big in the first place, eating all the protein in the house every time he got a little scared as a kid. At this rate the "Freshman 15" he'd avoided for three years would catch back up to him in _days_ despite his constant trips to the campus gym and status as a college junior.

But, he realized with a glance toward the bedroom door, the ghost hadn't followed him out of the closet—and that was something, at least.

Still, though.

He put a sticky note on his bathroom mirror that read: CONTACT GENKAI FOR EXORCISM.

* * *

NOTES:

 _This fic is named for the song "The Ghost in You" by the Psychedelic Furs. I particularly love the acoustic version._

 _Thanks to all those who reviewed the very short intro chapter on Wednesday. I was shocked by the reaction in the best way. I appreciate the support so much: Schizo the Mentally Disturbed, disenchanted love, Strawberry Huggles, o-dragon, Blaze1662001, destinyswindow, DeusVenenare, Kimimakku, Laina Inverse, inuluvskags1, 431101134, Desert Anon, read a rainbow, roseeyes, OdinsReaper, Anime Pleasegood and a guest!_


	3. Chapter 3: Light

Warnings: None

* * *

The Ghost in You

Chapter 03:

"Light"

* * *

The light swam from darkness as a word through silence, resonant and loud and blinding—and for a being who noticed nothing, beholding the light felt like taking a punch to the jaw.

After so many years of solitude—so many years trapped in unmoving, quiet dark—feeling the light would have been quite a shock (if It could feel such things as shock, which It presently could not). Pulsing as if with a heartbeat, as steady as a noonday sun, It felt that light on Itself and recoiled, for this was the first thing It had felt in—

It did not have words to express the concept of time.

But It could not recall the last time It had felt such heat, and that is indication of time enough.

It felt the light the moment it came near, impossible to ignore with its insistent glare, but the light did not mean It harm. The light did not come close to sear It, burn It as It feared it might—as some lights in the past had done to It, trying to chase It out. No. Rather, the light stayed at a distance, radiating as much wariness as warmth. And so It uncurled from Its frightened ball, wondering if the light would come near—and a hunger roused in Its belly, creeping and slow and cold.

The light would satisfy that hunger nicely, It knew.

But, no. To eat the light would be to kill the light. To consume was to kill; this It knew, for It had consumed before. Tempting as it was to try a taste of the light, It knew better.

It could not have Its light and eat it, too.

(It was not capable of jokes. This was as close to a joke as it could possibly conceive.)

It was content to bask, watch the light from afar, and feel warmed in Its chill existence at long last.

Tentatively It stretched its awareness toward the light, hoping the light would not flee.

The light did not.

Perhaps the light did not notice Its existence. It wasn't sure if It wanted the light to notice It, truth be told. So It relaxed, and It sighed to Itself in the dark, at peace in Its lonely despair.

This was better than before. Not perfect, but few things ever were, and "better" means as much as "perfect" to a being who owns nothing at all.

But to Its surprise, "better" did not last.

Soon the light grew curious.

The light came near.

The light spoke to It.

It… was not accustomed to being acknowledged. It was even less accustomed to being acknowledged than It was accustomed to being aware of Itself. With monumental effort It searched for a way to answer the light, hunting for some small part of Itself lingering amid the dark. Its final shreds of self were as sparks nearly swallowed by unending night, but at last It found them, and It dragged the few remaining shreds of Its awareness together, pushing that awareness forward to face the light.

For a moment, It felt pure light on Its face.

But the light quavered—quavered with fear, and with disgust.

The light fled.

For a moment, It let itself remain aware. It did not have the ability to feel sad or insulted, but It did wish the light had stayed close. However, the light remained at a distance, and so It retreated back within Itself—but for the first time in a long time, It wondered something.

How long had it been since It had been aware of existence outside Itself?

It could not remember—but It remembered what it was like to _want_ to remember, and for the first time in what was probably ages, from Its despair It stirred.

* * *

NOTES:

 _See you Saturday, Nov. 10,_ _with another Kuwabara chapter._

 _Feeling horrible tonight. Election results that endanger my friends and family were just called in my state. Reading your reviews of chapter 2 gave me some comfort tonight. Thank you very much for that gift: read a rainbow, Desert Anon, Kado Kattsune, o-dragon, Blaze1662001, Laina Inverse, destinyswindow, roseeyes, AnimePleasegood, HeeHeeHee01 and a guest._


	4. Ch 4: The Captain Kirk Anti-Fan Club

Warnings: None

* * *

The Ghost in You

Chapter 04:

"Kuro-chan & Kuwabara's Captain Kirk Anti-Fan Club"

* * *

School consumed every waking minute of Kuwabara's life—and half his sleeping minutes, too. He often dreamed of missing classes, of showing up to take tests he'd forgotten to study for, of being laughed out of lecture halls for forgetting to put on pants. And the dreams were bad, sure, but they weren't as bad as the insomnia. Yeah, those nights when he'd stay up till 1 AM finishing his homework, lie down in bed, and then feel wide awake? Those nights were the absolutely _pits_.

Because what a load of bullshit, right? Wake up early, hit the gym, spend all day in class, go home and do homework until after midnight—and then lie down and feel ready to run a mile? It wasn't fair, so far as Kuwabara was concerned.

A few weeks after the semester started, he found himself lying wide awake on his back, staring at the ceiling and unable to sleep. Since resistance was futile, he pulled a t-shirt from the closet ("'Sup, ghost?") and wandered to the living room, tugging the shirt over his muscular chest with a sigh. Kuwabara plopped into his easy chair and yanked up the footrest, reaching with his other hand for the TV remote. Nothing on but _Star Trek: The Next Generation_ reruns, badly dubbed with Japanese dialogue that didn't quite match the movements of the actors' mouths.

"Aw, man," he lamented. "Just play it with subtitles, whydontcha? That's just annoying to look at."

Annoying, but also unsettling. At times the Japanese voiceover didn't match the expressions on Picard's face, overacting in a moment he under-acted, tone a total mismatch to the scene at hand. After a few episodes Kuwabara decided it was super creepy, like aliens trying to understand humanity (a thought that made Kuwabara giggle because it was kinda-sorta a pun, right?).

Still, though.

Creepy though the show might've been, it wasn't nearly as creepy as the feeling of being watched.

He noticed during the fourth episode of the night, the one where Data has to prove his sentience in order to remain operational. The feeling of being watched began as a light itch on the back of Kuwabara's neck, intensifying into a full blown, ice cold tingle as time elapsed. Kuwabara tensed on the couch as the Tickle Feeling strengthened, hand tightening around his can of beer (which he'd hoped would make him sleepy). He kept his eyes forward, locked on the screen, until the credits rolled and darkness fell across the room.

Slowly, barely daring to move at all, he turned his head.

 _It_ lingered in the shadow of his bedroom doorway. Faint tendrils of black energy—manifesting visually as that slimy, crackling, hair-like substance that so often crept up the walls of Kuwabara's closet—snaked over the doorframe like gross-as-hell ivy. A pair of bone-white hands (emaciated, long nails cracked and chipped) curled around the frame, pulling into view that sickeningly white face with its all-black eyes, eyes that peered around the edge of the door like a shy demon child—or a character from a nightmarish cartoon—or—

The ghost gave a horrible rattle, sound barely perceptible yet skating across his skin like a touch from the specter's ashen hand.

Kuwabara tore his eyes away, looking determinedly toward the TV.

The ghost had been staring right at him… no.

It hadn't been staring at him.

It had been staring _past him_.

Staring past him… at the TV.

… so the ghost was a fan of _Star Trek_?

The ghost didn't move for a while after that. It just sat there, staring past him at the TV, as Picard and Data and Riker found their way off a hostile alien planet. He only had the heart for another two episodes before rising and heading for the kitchen to pour his untouched beer down the drain. By the time he returned to the living room, the ghost had retreated into the closet. Kuwabara gave the closet a hard stare as he slipped into bed and turned off his bedside lamp.

"'Night, ghost," he said into the darkness.

From behind the closet door came the barest shiver of recognition.

* * *

He nicknamed the ghost "Kuro-chan," eventually, and mostly out of a sense of personal convenience on Kuwabara's part. It certainly never spoke, or moved, or did anything in its own right that could earn it a name. It just sat there—that little black blob of shadow, reeking of darkness and pain—stirring only the barest iota when Kuwabara opened the closet door to grab the day's outfit of choice. Sometimes that face like milk and those eyes like nails would swim into view for the briefest of moments, but only rarely. Kuwabara couldn't tell if the ghost belonged to a woman or a man.

But there was a quality to its voice, in the cries he heard like distant sirens at night, that made him suspect the former.

So: "Chan" it was.

"Hi, Kuro-chan," he said every time he touched his closet door. "It's me, Kuwabara."

He always announced himself before opening the door. Maybe that was why he'd given the ghost a nickname. He needed to call it _something_. To keep calling it "ghost" felt really impolite. Really impersonal, he thought. He was much too busy to pay Genkai a visit for advice, which mean he had to learn to live with… or rather, _exist alongside_ the ghost in the meantime (only one of them was really living, after all). Best announce his presence. Best give it a name, make it feel at ease. No sense antagonizing the thing. His college stress-dreams were bad enough as it was without adding ghost-induced sleep paralysis to the mix.

Of course, there was no way to know if the ghost felt grateful for his consideration. It certainly never bothered to say "thank you," Kuwabara often griped to himself. It never moved, only responding to the nickname he'd given it after a solid month of use… if you can call the slightest of shivers a response. But it shivered _consistently_ , and since repetition of results was a key part of the scientific method, Kuwabara soon counted the consistent shivers as communication, however minor.

"Bye, Kuro-chan," he said every time he left for class. "Be good while I'm gone."

Although Kuwabara could barely sense the ghost by the time he reached the bottom of the stairwell, he thought he felt it shiver its own small goodbye in return.

Probably just wishful thinking, though.

* * *

As a pre-med student, Kuwabara had a lot of homework—and as consequence, more than a few late nights spent studying at his kitchen table.

Kuro-chan didn't seem to mind.

It became a ritual, of sorts. Homework, dinner, and then _Star Trek_ reruns in the wee hours, Data and Riker and Picard trading dire gazes as their ship came under attack by the Borg. Kuro-chan crept from the bedroom and watched the show from the doorway, coaxed each night from her closet after an episode or two elapsed. After a few weeks she—

(When had she become a "she" to him, anyway?)

—slid from the doorway along the dim floor to the end of the couch, crouching in the shadow of the armrest just out of sight. Kuwabara kept his eyes trained carefully on the television as Kuro-chan watched. He only looked her way when the night's scheduled marathon came to an end.

Inevitably she returned to her closet just as the final credits ran, while Kuwabara was not paying attention.

Sometimes, to fill the silence while he cooked dinner or did his nightly reading, Kuwabara channel surfed, favoring formulaic and plot-light programs he could tune out while concentrating on his books. Kuro-chan didn't react to news segments or gameshows the way she reacted to _Star Trek,_ though, and remained firmly in her closet—until Kuwabara stumbled upon a channel of English sitcoms (dubbed in Japanese, of course). He left the TV tuned to _Friends_ as he studied the limbic system, long body curled around his book in his easy chair by the window, lips moving as he read.

He didn't even notice Kuro-chan leave her the closet. He didn't clock her presence until he felt a shiver on his neck and saw skittering black tendrils crawling over the edge of the couch, a light-dark shadow radiating quiet dread just out of sight. Kuro-chan hid underneath the couch that time instead of in the shadow of the bedroom door. Two bloodshot eyes glowed in the space between the upholstery and the floor, fixed wide and unblinking on the glimmering haircut of... Kuwabara forgot the actress's name.

" _Friends_ , huh?" Kuwabara remarked. "Good to know."

The eyes under the couch flicked his way. He averted his gaze, breath catching like the hem of a coat on a nail—but when he looked again, the ghost had returned her attention to the people arguing on the screen.

Kuwabara settled into his chair and smiled.

* * *

Initially, several episodes had to play before Kuro-chan joined Kuwabara's TV-watching sessions. After a few weeks, however, she crept from the closet the moment the _Star Trek_ theme played or from the first notes of the _Friends_ jingle. Like she'd been waiting for the show to play. Like she'd been waiting all day for Kuwabara to come home and turn the TV on for her. Poor thing was probably bored, sitting in a closet for days on end. Kuwabara would be bored, too, haunting a place so drab. He hadn't even had time to hang his Megallica posters on the walls yet.

What did she do all day to pass the time, he wondered?

The next morning, he left the TV on while he went to school.

He left it on a classic movie channel. Surely Kuro-chan would like a classic movie channel. Her tastes were odd, sure, but even Kuwabara could appreciate classics (even the Western ones). Anything would be better than staring at a wall. Kuro-chan should be grateful he left the TV on at all. Undead beggars could not be choosers, and she would have to take whatever he doled out.

Still, though.

All through class, he worried.

But he needn't have.

He ran home and found her under the couch again, eyes glued to the images of Grace Kelly and Carey Grant embracing before a backdrop of the Eiffel Tower. From under the couch skittered that slimy, crackling hair, gripping the floorboards as the actors nearly fell from the tower's edge.

Kuwabara walked on quiet feet to his easy chair. He sat down, pulled out a textbook, and began his reading for the night.

Kuro-chan's eye flickered his way.

She studied him a moment.

She looked back to the movie.

Kuwabara smile behind his book. Call 'im crazy if you want, but it was kind of… nice, really. It was nice knowing someone was waiting for him at home. _She_ used to wait for him after school, and they'd go on a walk, and they'd cook dinner together and play with Eikichi, and he'd teach her about Human World while she smiled that bland, beautiful smile, and—

Kuro-chan grumbled.

Kuwabara looked up. Two bloodshot eyes stared in his direction, accusatory and intense. The tendrils on the floor had retreated out of sight below the couch.

"I'm fine," Kuwabara said.

The eyes did not move.

"Really, I'm fine." Kuwabara gestured at the TV. "You're missin' the good stuff."

A moment passed—and finally Kuro-chan looked away, tendrils creeping across the floor once again.

Kuwabara took a deep breath.

He banished thoughts of _her_ , and he went back to his reading.

* * *

As Riker took a redheaded woman in his arms and gave her a deep kiss, Kuro-chan rattled.

It was the rattle of a crushed trachea mixed with the sound of bones crunching under great weight, agitated like the hiss of a disturbed snake. Suppressing the shudder building in his back, Kuwabara glanced at the gap between the couch and the floor visible across the living room from his spot in his easy chair. The streetlight outside the window at his back turned the wood floor silver and cast the shadows under the couch into deeper shade.

"Riker can be such a dick sometimes," Kuwabara agreed.

Kuro-chan rattled again, vehemently.

"I know!" Kuwabara said. He gave a resolute nod as he crossed his arms over his chest. "He's gonna break somebody's heart someday, and it's not gonna look good on him."

More rattling, excited like a hive of prodded bees.

Kuwabara grinned. "He's the worst, that's for sure!"

Kuro-chan started to rattle—but then she stopped. A pause followed, and then a long, slow creak like the settling of an ancient house came from under the couch.

"Kuuuuuurk," creaked Kuro-chan.

Kuwabara blinked at the couch, at the too-deep shadows beneath. "Did… did you say _Kirk_?"

Another clatter, hesitant—and confirming. Kuwabara gaped for a minute, jaw clicking shut only when two silvery eyes appeared beneath the couch to stare at him.

"You're right!" Kuwabara said. "Riker isn't as bad as Kirk. Now _Kirk_ was a womanizer!"

The eyes looked especially bloodshot as Kuro-chan's rattle turned into a burbling crow, like fluid bubbling in the neck of a strangled man. Even though the sound finally brought Kuwabara's shudder to life, still he managed to smile. The picture on the TV flickered, lightbulb in the kitchen blinking in time to Kuro-chan's disgusting laugh.

"Oh, you really don't like Kirk." Kuwabara chortled. "Neither do I." He paused a moment while he thought up a name. "We'll have to start Kuro-chan & Kuwabara's Captain Kirk Anti-Fan Club together."

Kuro-chan burbled again. That time, it sounded very nearly like a laugh—a deranged one from a horror movie set in an asylum, but still.

It was an honest to goodness laugh, and Kuwabara added his own to the cacophony.

* * *

If you were to ask when the sticky note fell from the mirror, Kuwabara wouldn't be able to tell you.

He was busy, he told himself. He'd call tomorrow, he kept thinking. And one day as he showered, the sticky note (CALL GENKAI FOR EXORCISM, it said in chunky letters) fell from the mirror. The adhesive, diluted from many showers' steam, had worn off. The note lay behind the toilet bowl, hidden in the shadow of the tank. Kuwabara resolved to grab it and throw it away, write a new note to himself and stick it back up—but _later_ , because he was running late. Maybe put it somewhere drier this time.

By the time he returned home, he had forgotten the sticky note.

He did not write himself another copy.

* * *

NOTES:

 _"Kuro" means "black" in Japanese. "Chan" is the suffix you put on girls' names, and it means "cute" or "little." So Kuwabara basically just named the ghost after its color the way a kid names a white cat "Snowball." Also it was the name of a cartoon cat in Japan. More on that later. The classic movie they were watching is, BTW, "To Catch a Thief."_

 _The following have my love and gratitude for their support: Gelasia Kidd, read a rainbow, Blaze1662001, Desert Anon, o-dragon, Laina Inverse, Anime Pleasegood, DeusVenenare, HeeHeeHee01, Odins Reaper and a guest!_


	5. Chapter 5: Names

Warnings: None

* * *

The Ghost in You

Chapter 05:

"Names"

* * *

 _Bedroom._

 _Hallway._

 _Living room._

These were the names of places. Places were points in space, delineated as much by distance as by function. Each place possessed a name to denote its intended purpose. The light did not sleep in the hall; the light slept in the bedroom. The light did not do homework in the bedroom; the light did homework in the living room. Only slowly did It recall the idea of place—a recollection sparked when the light stayed too far away from It, and It was forced to consider where the light had gone.

 _Couch._

 _Textbook._

 _Television._

These were the names of objects. Objects were things that served purposes. Objects differed from places in that they served their purpose _inside_ of places and were thus smaller than _living room_ and _bedroom_ and _hallway._ Objects were things the light used to be comfortable, or to see, or to entertain. Only slowly did It recall the idea of objects—a recollection sparked when the light paid attention to things other than It, and It was forced to wonder what those things might be.

 _Star Trek._

 _Friends._

 _Movies._

These were the names of what It saw on the television set. The things It saw on the television set were given names to tell them apart, and to denote what one might find within their boundaries. _Star Trek_ was about discovery. _Friends_ was about people. Movies were about many things. Only slowly did It recall that the sounds (for it had become aware of sound when it became aware of places, listening intently each night for the light to come to bed, in the bedroom, where sleeping happened) coming from the television might have meaning—a recollection sparked when the light observed the TV set each night, and It was forced to wonder what the TV's sounds might mean.

 _Rachel._

 _Phoebe._

 _Riker._

 _Kirk._

These were names of people. Familiar names, though It could not say for certain where It had heard those names before. People (for the television inevitably displayed people) all had names. So did objects. So did places. Names were used to tell people apart. Names were used to tell objects apart. Names were used to tell places apart. It had been assigning things names before It remembered the concept of names in the first place—a recollection sparked when It could not recognize a word the light kept uttering in Its presence, and It was forced to wonder what that word might mean.

 _Kuro-chan._

It did not know what "Kuro-chan" meant, nor what that word was meant to describe—but the light spoke the word often to It, and thus It began to think the word might be a name. But to what did the name belong?

Kuro-chan.

 _Kuro_ -chan.

Kuro- _chan_.

"What's in a name?" It wondered (though the question did not feel as though it belonged to It). Yet even so, the question stood, for It did not know to what that name referred, nor for what reason the light so often spoke it.

It liked the way the name sounded, though.

It liked the way it sounded so much, It eventually (presumptuously, impossibly) began to consider the idea that the name could even, perhaps, belong to It.

* * *

NOTES:

 _What's in a name, indeed?_

 _Am going to be too busy tomorrow to post this, so up it goes this evening!_

 _MANY thanks to those who commented on chapter 4. This week has been stressful (I'm about to move apartments) and you lifted my anxious spirits. Pun intended? Maybe. Probably. Definitely. ANYWAY, I offer my thanks to the following folks for being amazing: Kado-Kattsune, HeeHeeHee01, Kimimakku, Blaze1662001, OdinsReaper, Schizo the Mentally Disturbed, Sterling Bee, Laina Inverse, o-dragon, Anime Pleasegood, read a rainbow, guest, and Desert Anon!_


	6. Chapter 6: The Hanged Man

Warnings: Vomit, supernatural violence and disturbing imagery. Implication of strangulation.

* * *

The Ghost in You

Chapter 06:

"The Hanged Man"

* * *

Kuwabara was in the middle of class when he felt it.

He almost didn't feel it, truth be told. Living with a ghost had acclimated him to the sensation of being watched—to that nagging feeling of no longer being by yourself, of eyes clinging to your sweating nape even though you know you're alone in your apartment.

Kuro-chan's eyes didn't feel like nettles against his skin, however.

Not like this.

In the middle of the bio lecture, a feeling scraped over Kuwabara's neck like fingernails dipped in poison ivy, and he sat up straight with a jolt. The professor droned on about blood cells and the immune system without pause, not noticing as Kuwabara's head inched slowly around atop his clammy neck.

He spotted the apparition at once.

A man in a dove grey business suit stood at the top of the auditorium stairs, neatly combed hair and polished shoes gleaming beneath the fluorescent lights. It might have looked alive to the untrained eye, but Kuwabara was no beginner at spotting ghosts. The dead man stared straight at him with unblinking, bulging eyes, the buckle of the belt around its neck clinking like a tiny bell as its head listed to the side—yet it wasn't any of these things, but rather the grey-blue pallor of its skin that tipped Kuwabara off to the undead truth. That and the long tongue lolling from between the man's oversized ivory teeth when it leered knowingly in Kuwabara's direction, of course. Those were hard to miss.

As soon as he saw the teeth, Kuwabara turned back around, psychic walls slamming into place to safeguard his soul.

Maybe he'd gotten sloppy. The possibility played through his brain like a scratched record, unending and jarring and painful. Maybe he'd been living so long with Kuro-chan, he'd forgotten how awful ghosts could be. He'd forgotten not all of them watched _Friends_ and argued with him about _Star Trek_ womanizers. He'd forgotten that some ghosts saw the light of his energy and wanted to take it for themselves, like the man with the belt—because that guy was not here for a picnic. Or maybe he _was_ , and Kuwabara was the main course, but now wasn't the time for jokes, goshdarnit. Even through his psychic walls, Kuwabara felt the dead man's malice. He felt the hunger gnawing up his spine, the way the ghost strained against his walls to suck down the light of living energy like a kid slurping soda through a crazy straw.

He didn't want to find out.

When the bell rang, Kuwabara left the room at a jog. A few classmates tried to speak with him, but he strode past with eyes trained straight ahead. He didn't acknowledge his classmates. He didn't acknowledge anyone as he left campus and headed for the train station, never once looking back as the school faded into the distance behind him.

And yet, the ghost's eyes never left the back of his neck.

Kuwabara walked faster when he caught sight of the train station's signage at the end of the block. Ghosts typically stayed bound to one area. Leave fast enough, they couldn't follow. They got distracted and found a new target, energy and focus unravelling like a skein of loose wool the further and further they got from the place of their death (because that was where most ghosts lingered when they died, he'd learned, and why hospitals creeped him out so dang much).

This ghost did not grow unfocused, however.

This ghost did not unravel like loose wool.

This ghost stalked Kuwabara to the station, down the escalator… and onto the fucking train.

 _Goddammit_.

Kuwabara grasped one of the handrails at the top of the subway car and stared pointedly out the window into the dark of the tunnel beyond, every ounce of his energy pouring into the psychic walls keeping the ghost from touching him. He saw its face in the reflection of the train car window, that pale face with its lipless mouth hovering over his shoulder, hollow-eyed and cackling. Only the strongest of ghosts had reflections, he knew, which meant this specter had likely snacked on another psychic or two before latching onto Kuwabara. Cold breath frosted on his nape as the ghost tried, and failed, to worm its way into Kuwabara's spirit energy, but Kuwabara held his defenses fast.

No matter how hard he tried, however, he could not stop the feeling of cold, dry fingers scrabbling across his wrist, nor the feeling of nausea rising like a gritty wave into his throat when said fingers traced the hollow of his ear. It's no wonder, then, that Kuwabara could not help but feel relieved when the reflection of the ghost's face turned away from him, and the specter floated away from him down the length of the train car.

But then Kuwabara heard the crying.

Moving in increments, Kuwabara turned just barely to the side. He'd been so busy ignoring the hanged man, he hadn't noticed the other ghost in the car. It sat next to the door in an empty seat, puddles of water dripping off the ends of its hair and the length of its pert nose. Small feet clad in sodden shoes kicked above the ground. Little hands clasped a soaked school bag—because this was the ghost of a little schoolboy, face blue and bloated, drowned and left to linger here in the living world.

The hanged man floated toward the little boy.

The little boy looked up, tears leaking from his enormous, ghostly eyes—and then the hanged man smiled.

Its jaw unhinged.

Kuwabara did not (could not) shout a warning in time.

The hanged man enveloped the ghost-child's head and torso in the depths of its unhinged maw, swallowing him down to his waist in one quick snap. Ghosts do not have physical forms. The hanged man took the shape it most wanted to take, the shape he deemed best suited for cannibalizing another spirit. And even with no physical form, the little boy kicked and flailed, trying to fight back—but it was no use. The hanged man bit down and severed the child in half. The boy's hips and legs flopped to the floor before disintegrating like dust on a high wind. The hanged man's head tipped back as its distended throat worked, forcing down the ghost child's energy like a python swallowing a rabbit.

There was no blood.

But that just somehow made it worse.

And then the hanged man's bulging, bloodshot eyes flicked in Kuwabara's direction once again—and the hunger in those eye?

The hunger was the worst of all.

Bile in his mouth, Kuwabara jerked his clammy, sweating face back to the window.

The hanged man stepped into his shadow with a gurgling, deranged giggle.

The spirit followed him home, even though Kuwabara rode the train line two extra stops and doubled back, hoping distance from its resting place would banish the hungry ghoul. His plan did not work, however—and he was on the verge of becoming sick. His hands shook, a chill lodging deep in his roiling gut. He hadn't encountered a ghost this malicious, this powerful, since he was a child, and Shizuru had been the one to chase those angry wraiths away. He hadn't been strong enough to do it himself, back then, and now he was out of practice—out of practice, but not without resources.

Time to make Shizuru proud. He'd never live it down, in her eyes, if he let this thing get the best of him.

As soon as Kuwabara exited the train and found himself alone at his stop, the only person on the subway platform, he turned to the ghost and looked at it directly.

The spirit leered, eyes bulging from its purple face.

Kuwabara swallowed down the ichor in his throat.

"Go home, fatso," he said. "You already had dinner."

And he shoved a wave of power at the creature, blindingly hot and brilliant.

The spirit screeched on contact, image of its body flickering like mist in the burst of caustic light—light Kuwabara had engineered to hurt the thing, not feed it or give it strength. A creature made of such dark malice didn't mesh with Kuwabara's pure energy, recoiling and shrieking on the subway platform, form all but blown away by Kuwabara's attack.

Kuwabara turned and ran.

He ran so hard he lost track of his own breath as he pelted down the sidewalk, into the building, and up the stairs, where he slammed into his apartment and headed headlong for the bathroom. The TV played an episode of _Friends_ , Kuro-chan tweeting at him as he ran past, but Kuwabara ignored her—and yet, even so, he couldn't get to the toilet in time, shirt and bathmat both flecked with vomit as he collapsed in front of the commode. So much for his lunch, he though as he heaved. But he hadn't met a ghost so vicious in years, and he did not blame himself for vomiting. Not one bit.

Tile floor cold under his knees, concentrating on not letting barf come up his nose (snarfing, Yusuke had oh-so-charmingly named that gross-ass action), he barely heard Kuro-chan rattling at him from the doorway. Listing sideways on his hip, cheek pressed to the toilet rim, he cracked an eye and found her peering at him around the doorframe. Kuro-chan was so small compared to the evil asshole ghost he'd met earlier. She was just two little hands, boney and frail, a bit of matted hair, and bloodshot eyes peeking timid at his face from around the corner. A far cry from the full-bodied apparition, bold and awful, he'd met at school.

She rattled again. Kuwabara could've sworn she sounded concerned, though Jennifer Aniston's voice (ah, right, that was her name) made it hard to tell. _Friends_ played loudly in the adjacent living room, almost drowning Kuro-chan out.

"I'm fine." The words came out in a totally unconvincing rasp, though, so he repeated himself. "I'm fine. There was just this—"

But he froze before he could finish, because a low laugh echoed from his living room, and a wave of freezing malice washed across his scalp.

Kuro-chan's enormous eyes somehow widened further still—and with another rattle (furious as a hornet under glass, this time) she slithered onto the floor and into the living room.

"Kuro-chan—wait!" Kuwabara said, but she did not come back.

It was stupid, wanting to protect a ghost. "What's the worst that could happen—the ghost gets _killed_?" Yusuke would probably joke if he was here, but he wasn't, so Kuwabara lurched to his feet and stumbled on unsteady legs after her. Yusuke didn't know what Kuwabara knew, hadn't seen what Kuwabara had seen, hadn't seen larger, stronger ghosts devour smaller ones like sharks swallowing minnows whole, absorbing their energies to power their ill intent. And his sweet little _Friends_ -loving Kuro-chan, who never woke him up at night or gave him nightmares or even scared the neighbors, didn't stand a chance against the fiend who'd followed him home.

If the ghost of the hanged man swallowed her, his sweet little Kuro-chan—she'd cease to exist.

For that was the fate of ghosts eaten by others. That was the fate of the little drowned boy. Nothingness, forever and ever. Oblivion.

He would not let that become the fate of Kuro-chan, god help him.

He found her on the living room floor, a quivering lump of darkness against the wooden floor, pale hands and a grey face emerging from a lump of ichor-dripping hair to stare at the ghost of the hanged man. She opened her mouth and screeched her rattling death knell as the hanged man grinned, mouth split in the same hungry smile it had worn before feasting on the little boy. The hanged man's hands curled before his chest, long, spindly fingers flexing as he licked his lips at Kuro-chan. His next meal. The hanged man planned to make her his next meal (Kuwabara knew that like he knew his own name), and with another moaning giggle the hanged man stepped toward her.

Before it could reach Kuro-chan, a chill wind swept through the apartment.

The hanged man froze. Papers on the coffee table flew into the air like bone-white bats, whirling in the sudden maelstrom that sent Kuwabara staggering backward on his feet. He clung to the bathroom door, shivering as the unnatural cold made his breath fog in the whirling air.

The hanged man's grin vanished.

Kuro-chan began to grow.

Bigger and bigger the lump of slimy hair grew, strands roiling and writhing like a tangle of enraged snakes. Kuro-chan grew to the size of a dog, then the size of a crouched person, then the size of Kuwabara's easy chair, hair endlessly multiplying and lengthening and squirming around her, her rattling cry louder and louder with every elapsing second. The hanged man shrank back as her head brushed the ceiling and her shadow covered its purple face, its mouth opening not with hunger, but with terror so complete Kuwabara felt the taste of it in his bones.

Kuro-chan didn't bite this ghost in half and devour it screaming, as the hanged man had done to the little drowned boy.

No.

She ate it un-alive—un-alive and whole.

Like a soundless, crashing wave, she threw herself at the hanged man, enrobing it in her darkness as night consumes the day. The ghost didn't even have time to scream. It thrashed under Kuro-chan's great spiritual weight, trying to break loose as she devoured it, struggles denting and distending her not-body from within—but its efforts did the hanged man no good. Its struggles lost their vigor, and Kuro-chan soon stilled.

She shrank back to her normal size.

She lay on the floor for a moment of misplaced time.

Then—with movements slow and sleepy—she slid under the couch and out of sight. A contented rattle reverberated against the wooden floor below… followed by a tiny hiccup, like the belch of a sated infant.

Kuwabara did not move for a moment.

Then, every joint creaking, he collapsed onto the couch and fell into deep, dreamless sleep.

* * *

When Kuwabara woke, it was night, and he could not move.

He was no stranger to sleep paralysis, though, so he didn't freak out like some wet-behind-the-ears chump. Had been through this enough times to know freaking out wouldn't help nothin'. Took him a moment to piece together why he couldn't sit up, disoriented as he swum from the depths of unconsciousness, but soon he realized what was happening.

The hand tracing cool figures on his brow was a big clue, after all.

Her touch was as soft as the moonlight falling through the living room window, as gentle and light as the voice murmuring a wordless song he didn't recognize. For a moment he didn't even think of struggling. In the dark and quiet, he let his eyes fall shut (they were the only things he could ever move during sleep paralysis). This all reminded him of when his mother would sing to him as a kid, before she died. She'd always loved to stroke his hair as he pretended to sleep. Saying goodbye, night after night, as the cancer ate her away from the inside out.

But this was not Kuwabara's mother, and eventually, he had to stop that pleasant daydream (night-dream?) and find out who it was, instead.

A willowy figure sat by his hip, leaning against his side on the couch. One of her arms lay along his chest, resting upon him as she stroked his face. Long hair, black and stringy, obscured her features, head bowed toward her lap even as she hummed.

He didn't recognize her by the hair, though that was a tell.

He recognized her because she exuded the loneliest, most desolate energy he had felt in his entire life—and that desolation was familiar.

This, he knew, was Kuro-chan.

The moment he thought her name, she turned to look at him.

She barely had a face. She had but the merest suggestion of features, suggestions that rippled like thin mist the longer he tried to nail down what she looked like—but even so, a tear managed to fall down one of her wizened cheeks. They traded a stare for what could have been hours or minutes, all-black eyes locked on his brown ones even as moonlight scattered her face like the wind scatters dandelion down.

Just like that, she disappeared.

Kuwabara could move again.

The next morning, he went to the bathroom and stepped in a puddle of his own sick. With a curse he hauled out a bucket of cleaning supplies, but as he bent to scrub the toilet bowl, a bright yellow square of paper lying forgotten behind the commode caught his eye. He reached for it and lifted it between two fingers.

CONTACT GENKAI FOR EXORCISM, the fallen sticky note instructed.

Kuwabara looked at the note for a long time.

His awareness stretched outward—and, yes. Kuro-chan had gone back into her closet.

Her lonely, dark, _miserable_ little closet.

Kuwabara crumpled the sticky note in his enormous fist.

Kuro-chan had helped him last night.

Now it was his turn to help her.

As soon as the weekend came, he bought a ticket, boarded a train, and headed for Genkai's temple.

* * *

NOTES:

 _Kuro-chan showed her teeth, and then her soft side, this chapter. She's creepy as heck but I find her adorable. "So creepy she's cute," I guess?_

 _My favorite author, William Goldman, died this week, and I am very sad. Curling up to watch The Princess Bride in his honor today._

 _If you joined us last time, thank you. You are amazing: LadyGhoul, DeusVenenare, destinyswindow, Laina Inverse, Anime Pleasegood, o-dragon, Blaze1662001, Schizo the Mentally Disturbed, read a rainbow, Kimimakku, 431101134, SterlingBee, roseeyes, D-Fool, and a g _uest!__


	7. Chapter 7: Hope

Warnings: Disturbing imagery.

* * *

The Ghost in You

Chapter 07:

"Hope"

* * *

Her light was terrified, but _the hanged man could not have him._

She felt fear clinging to her light even before he came home, felt the horror and pain radiating from his brilliant soul even before he came back to her, when he was still on the street and nearing—and then she'd felt the hanged man follow. The hanged man thought it would have her light for supper, but it was wrong. The hanged man had licked its chops and crept in close, but Kuro-chan (for she had embraced the name her light had given her, and for she was a she, not an _it_ anymore) would not stand for this.

It was _her_ light, not the ghost of the hanged man's.

The light belonged to _her_ , and no one else.

She summoned every last ounce of her power that remained, and she ate her fill.

The hanged man was not the first ghost she'd eaten. Hunger had gnawed at her before, and she had hunted. Once she had tasted the ankle of a spirit flying through the sky, one whose soul shined like a star, but the spirit had rebuffed her, and so Kuro-chan had retreated—but that was the only spirit to resist her power. Before she had fully succumbed to the darkness of despair, she had been powerful. Ghosts had learned to stay away from her nest, leaving her lonely and alone.

But this ghost had not learned.

This ghost's impertinence, its hunger for what belonged to her—she simply could not stand for it.

So she destroyed the hanged man with impunity, and without compunction.

Perhaps she was still powerful, after all.

Her reason for feasting was simple, of course. If the hanged man ate her light, she would not be able to look at him any longer. She would lose the warmth that sustained her so, the warmth that beat back the dark and let her watch _Star Trek_ reruns (oh, how she enjoyed _Star Trek_ reruns!) from under the couch. She had no choice, really, but to eat the hanged man whole. She had no other option at all. She had no choice but to protect her light, and to keep the darkness staved off for as long as she had the strength to protect her light from harm.

Her light.

 _Hers._

No choice, in that case: She had to eat the hanged man, although it tasted foul. She had eaten it because eating it would make her light safe again, so she choked the hanged man down and was glad of it. One big swallow and it was gone. Down the hatch, fast and rough. No since lingering on such a bad and nasty taste.

The light did not linger, either. The light dimmed into the shadows of restless sleep, and while she did not have the ability to see her light's face (too bright, too bright), she felt the fear in his dreams.

She comforted him. She could not help herself. She forced herself into physical being and went to him. She sang and she stroked his brow, hardly daring to look at him directly.

In time, the fear inside him eased.

The fear inside her, in turn, eased as well.

For the first time in forever, relief filled her being to bursting.

But with the dawn, in spite of her efforts to make his world safe, her light left her alone again.

He fled. He went away.

This she did not understand.

Where was her light going?

Would he be back soon?

In the absence of light, despair crept in, shadows and gloom filling her to bursting just as the taste of relief once had—but something else, and unexpected, crept in on despair's dark heels.

Hope.

As a candle beats back the dark, hope flickered inside of her. Hope, that thing with feathers (did that phrase belong to her?), fluttered against the walls of her soul. It was hope that she'd done nothing wrong. Hope that the light knew she had only tried to protect him. Hope that her light would be back soon.

 _Hope._

She was happy to realize she had the strength to hope, and the ability to feel happy about it, too.

At the glow of that happiness—a light that was Kuro-chan's, and hers alone—the darkness inside her retreated even further.

Kuro-chan took up a post by the front door.

She waited.

And she hoped.

* * *

NOTES:

 _Kuro-chan has grown since we last checked in, it seems._

 _Thanks to all those who joined us last time: destinyswindow, Lady Hummingbird, Schizo the Mentally Disturbed, Laina Inverse, SterlingBee, 431101134, read a rainbow, Blaze1662001, HeeHeeHee01, roseeyes, Anime Pleasegood, IronDBZ, o-dragon and a guest!_


	8. Chapter 8: Other Paths

Warnings: None

* * *

The Ghost in You

Chapter 08:

"Other Paths"

* * *

Genkai put down her teacup with a clatter. "You mean to tell me you moved into a haunted apartment? _On purpose?_ " One baleful eye swept over him, critical and rheumy. "What the hell did you go and do that for?"

"I was in a hurry, OK?" Kuwabara protested, rubbing at the back of his neck. "Cut me some slack!"

They sat in Genkai's favorite tea room, the one near the back of the temple compound overlooking a sand garden and a fountain, and Kuwabara's legs had nearly fallen asleep underneath him from sitting _seiza_ -style for too long. If Genkai noticed him fidgeting atop his prickling ankles, she didn't say anything. She just stared him down, silent as birds sang in the trees beyond the temple's cloistering wall. Boughs swayed with a sound like quiet ocean tides, hushed and rhythmic in the midafternoon sun. If he hadn't napped on the long train ride over, the scenery would likely make him feel quite sleepy.

"Harrumph," said Genkai, after a time. "Well, you at least had the sense to come to me for help, I suppose." She favored him with a critical look. "But why me and not your sister?"

He fidgeted. "Shizuru would make fun of me."

Genkai smirked. "True. I've always liked her." She waved one wrinkled hand. "Tell me about it."

Kuwabara blinked. "What?"

"Tell me about it." She waited a beat, but when Kuwabara didn't reply, she added: "Tell me about the ghost, dimwit."

"She." The word slipped out of his mouth of its own accord; he swallowed, face heating at Genkai's raised eyebrow. "She's a 'she,' not an 'it.'"

Genkai scowled. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you feel sorry for it."

"She," Kuwabara insisted. He'd already fought for Kuro-chan's gender; no sense backing down now. "'She,' not 'it.'"

Genkai rolled her eyes. "Fine. She, then." She reached for her tea. Took a long sip. "Tell me about _her_."

"OK." He shifted again, trying to coax blood back into his feet. "Well, I first realized Kuro-chan was—"

"Kuro-chan?" Genkai put down her teacup again, ceramic ringing against the wooden table between them. "You mean you named it, too?"

Kuwabara threw up his hands and listed to the side, sliding off his aching legs and onto his hip. "Are you gonna let me tell you the story or not?" he said, and Genkai grudgingly grumbled for him to continue.

Wary of another interruption, Kuwabara started his story slowly. When Genkai shut her eyes to listen, he let the pace pick up (and the closed eyes made him fell less self-conscious, to boot, which was nice). He told Genkai about discovering the ghost in his closet, about Kuro-chan finally showing herself, her love of _Star Trek_ and _Friends_ and old movies on the classic channel. He felt silly, wondering what Genkai was thinking behind her placid mask, but he dared not stop as he told her about Kuro-chan consuming the specter of the hanged man and how she had comforted him that night when he slept—and gave him sleep paralysis in the process, of course, but the cool hand on his brow and her tuneless lullaby had been intended as a kindness, he was sure.

"I know I'm being sentimental and stuff and that Yusuke would make fun of me, but—but I'd like to help her if I could." He twisted the hem of his shirt in his hands, not daring to look at Genkai any longer. "She's the loneliest, saddest thing I've ever sensed, but I think deep down she's… nice. She's really, actually _nice_." He took a deep breath. "So I was thinking of an exorcism, send her to heaven where she can be happy, y'know?" A tentative peek at Genkai from under his hooded brow. "Do you think you can help me with that?"

Her eyes opened. "Sorry, kid, but it doesn't work that way."

"… huh?"

"Exorcism doesn't send a ghost to heaven. It makes a ghost leave wherever it's decided to stay, and whether they go to the next world or just next door is anyone's guess." She took a long sip of tea while Kuwabara processed this—that his big idea (not to mention his only idea) wasn't going to bear fruit. As his shoulders sagged she told him, "Exorcism is forced banishment. It doesn't do a damn thing to change a ghost's energy or emotions. In fact, exorcising an angry or lonely spirit might only make them angrier, or lonelier. And if a spirit is angry enough, an exorcism could send them straight to hell." Her stare was as hard as it was cold, as much a warning as it was a condemnation. "Exorcism would send this ghost of yours to the afterlife wreathed in torment, if it sends her there at all."

"Oh." Kuwabara's voice came out small. "I didn't know."

Genkai snorted. "Of course you didn't. You use your powers to fight, not to heal or bless." She put up a hand before he could protest. "That wasn't a criticism, so stop bristling. We all walk our paths in life. You chose the path of a fighter, and you've walked it well. Now you're exploring the new path of exorcism, and of course you don't know shit about where the road might take you next." Her hand descended to the table; she pushed herself to standing and tucked her arms behind her back. "Follow me."

He had no idea where she intended to take him, of course. He was almost too busy feeling disappointed to wonder. This had been his best idea, and to be told it would not work sent a spike of anxiety deep into his gut. He barely noticed the creaking floorboards and paper doors as Genkai led the way through the temple, his eyes downcast, mind stuck on memories of the night before. He thought of Kuro-chan's hand on his brow, her off-key humming in his ears, the hopelessness dripping from her like water leaking from a faucet that teetered on the brink of rupturing and sending a geyser of grief sky high. That poor thing. If exorcism couldn't help her, what could?

In spite of himself, Kuwabara felt helpless. He'd slayed a hundred demons in his life. He could make a sword out of pure energy. All of his skills, every ounce of his carefully honed fighting prowess, it was all useless here. But fighting had been the only path he knew to take, back when he first chose to develop his powers. He had given learning to heal or exorcise passing consideration over the years, but he'd chosen instead to hone his spiritual weaponry. He could block out ghosts, after all. He was good at it, too. What need did he have to exorcise or cleanse them when he could just block them out?

What other paths were there, and why had Genkai alluded to them?

Genkai took him to a room he'd never seen before, with high ceilings and tall walls covered in a honeycomb of diamond shaped cubbies. From the cubbies dangled braided tassels and paper tags, hundreds of them fluttering in the breeze as Genkai threw open the room's double doors. Dust tickled his nose and coaxed from him a violent sneeze as Genkai marched inside and strode up a tall ladder, one set on rungs and wheels to provide access to the upper cubbies.

She pointed forward. "Wheel me over there."

Kuwabara pushed the ladder where Genkai needed to go and watched as she pulled on the end of a red tassel. Out of the cubby slid an antique scroll case, black lacquer with golden filigree, which she examined before replacing with a tut and a shake of her head. "Damn eyes; I'm getting old," she muttered, but the next scroll she pulled passed muster. She slid down the ladder and removed the scroll from its case (this one plain brown and made of leather), unfurling the parchment inside with a flick of her wrist. When Kuwabara at last pulled his hands from the ladder, they came away covered in grime he blotted on the legs of his jeans. Genkai's hands were stained, too, but somehow she didn't leave fingerprints on the scroll.

"If you want help this ghost of yours, you need to purify its soul, not send it packing to Spirit World as is." A quick sweep of her eyes across the paper, a curt nod, and Genkai rolled the scroll back up and handed it to Kuwabara. "Here. Enact this ritual—the Ritual of Spiritual Purification."

Though small, the scroll felt like a dumbbell on Kuwabara's palm, weighty with its own importance. "The Ritual of Spiritual Purification?" he repeated.

Genkai nodded. "Accomplished mediums can perform the equivalent of this ritual with the manipulation of their spirit energy alone, but a novice like you will need the guidance of a spell like this."

"OK." Kuwabara supposed that all made sense. "But what does it do, exactly?"

"It will cleanse the ghost's soul of negativity, revealing the person it used to be—but be warned." Genkai held up a finger, eyes twin coals burning in her wrinkled face. "A ghost that lonely and that powerful must have died under tragic circumstances. It's sure to have unfinished business."

"Unfinished business?" Kuwabara said, incredulous. "That's _real?"_

" _Of course_ it's real," Genkai snapped. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"Well, it's just, you see that in movies all the time with ghosts. So I thought—"

"So you thought it must be fake? Movies aren't always wrong just because they're movies," said Genkai with maddening sincerity. Much though Kuwabara wanted to ask more question, Genkai did not allow him the opportunity. She soldiered on and said, "If you reveal the true nature of this ghost, it's sure to have some unfinished business that kept it fixated on your apartment in the first place. Maybe it died there, maybe it left its favorite shoes under the floorboards, who knows? But resolve that business, whatever it is, and you can help this 'Kuro-chan' find her way to Heaven—no exorcism required."

It seemed almost too good to be true, but Genkai wasn't the sort to make promises recklessly. He stowed the scroll in his jacket pocket, patting it with one enormous hand. "Yeah," Kuwabara said, nodding as much to himself as to Genkai. "Yeah. Finish her unfinished business. That's what I'll do."

Genkai's lip curled into a knowing sneer. "Hmph. No matter what sordid matter she was involved in, I get the feeling you'll want to help no matter what." The sneer turned into a grin, sly and suggestive. "It might just be easier for you to leave it be, you know. Just move out and forget her once the semester ends, not meddle in some strange ghost's affairs."

Had Kuwabara still been holding the scroll, he would have surely dropped it in shock. Instead he merely started, jaw hanging open before he stammered, "G-Genkai, how could you?! That's _cruel!_ "

But the old woman just chuckled, not at all cowed by his scolding. "Heh. Knew you wouldn't go for that. You're too softhearted. Too kind." Her lips curled at one wrinkled corner. "Much kinder than this old biddy."

Kuwabara composed himself, not sure what to make of that comment. He felt like maybe Genkai was poking fun at herself, or maybe at him; he wasn't sure. He touched the scroll in his pocket again. He certainly didn't think he was kind—just responsible. And most people would help the ghost if they found themselves in his position, he reasoned. So, no. He was not overly kind. Just being a man, that's all.

"Yusuke has some experience with fixated ghosts," Genkai said. She walked out the door of the library; Kuwabara followed. "He dealt with a few during his days as a ghost, himself. Ask him if you need help—and Botan, too. She does this for a living, after all."

"Thank you, Genkai," Kuwabara said.

"What for? I didn't do anything." She shot a look of stern displeasure over her stooped shoulder. "And don't call me if it goes bad. I don't give a crap about this junk." But he caught the smile on her lips as she turned back around, leading him out of the temple toward the stairs that would take him home. "Let the whippersnappers handle the collateral damage, if there is any. I'm just a frail old lady, after all."

And maybe that was true, in some small sense. Her back wasn't as straight as it had been, her eyes no longer as sharp. Her energy, while still a bright spot in his awareness, flickered like a lantern running low on oil. Genkai had certainly aged in the last few years—but Kuwabara got the sense, as she bid him goodbye and saw him off at the top of the temple steps, that in spite of what she'd said, Genkai gave the tiniest of craps about Kuro-chan, after all.

Genkai had to care—about Kuro-chan, or maybe just about Kuwabara himself—or else she wouldn't have helped him help Kuro-chan in the first place.

* * *

NOTES

 _In the manga, there are spells, curses, and other magics that the anime never explored. I'm thinking the Ritual of Spiritual Purification would fit into that lore quite nicely. Only question now is if it will work, and what will Kuro-chan be like if it does._

 _Many thanks to all those who found the time to review during this busy (American) holiday week, and a happy belated Thanksgiving to all those who celebrate it: IronDBZ, o-dragon, Kimimakku, Guest, 431101134, Blaze1662001, read a rainbow, Schizo the Mentally Disturbed, SterlingBee!_


	9. Ch 9: Ritual of Spiritual Purification

Warnings: None

* * *

The Ghost in You

Chapter 09:

"The Ritual of Spiritual Purification"

* * *

Kuwabara was a little afraid the ritual would be as complicated as his chemistry homework, but luckily for him, the whole thing seemed pretty self-explanatory once he unrolled the scroll and got to studying. Big ring of candles, some sigils in chalk on the floor, chunks of quartz crystal, bowls of salt and water and earth and wood shavings—elements of purification, energy, and the basic materials from which the living world was formed. He'd seen Captain Planet; he knew what the materials were about. It made plenty of sense, even if he couldn't actually read the weird symbols he bent on hands and knees to inscribe upon the floor.

He couldn't understand the symbols, but he understood very clearly what the objects that filled the center of the circle were all about.

When he'd first started examining the Ritual of Spiritual Purification scroll on the train ride home, he'd had a moment of panic, because the scroll had told him to place either the spirit's physical form or something the deceased loved in the middle of the chalk ring—and seeing as how he didn't own a lock of Kuro-chan's stringy and definitely not physical hair, that left him with a beloved object. But what, exactly, did the ghost who lived in his apartment actually _like?_ She certainly didn't own anything, and for a minute Kuwabara thought the ritual had ended before it could even begin. But then it occurred to him that, oh, wait a minute. He knew a _lot_ about what Kuro-chan liked, actually, even if she didn't own anything of her own. He could use a coffee cup to represent the show _Friends_ and fish that old Starship Enterprise keychain out of his sock drawer. She loved _Friends_ and _Star Trek_. Those trinkets would do the trick, wouldn't they?

Kuwabara thought so, but just to be safe, at the train stop near his house he purchased a small snow globe with the Eiffel Tower in it.

Well, it was technically Tokyo Tower, but they were basically the same thing and Kuro-chan probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference, anyway. Kuwabara certainly couldn't.

He wasn't quite sure why he purchased the snow globe, truth be told. He saw it on a gift shop's shelf from the corner of his eye as he walked out of the train station and just… had a feeling. Not the Tickle Feeling, but something close. Maybe Tokyo Tower reminded him of that classic movie with Carey Grant he'd come home to find Kuro-chan watching one day, since that movie had had the Eifel Tower in it and whatnot. Or maybe it was just a random feeling, a hunch he could not explain. A similar hunch told him to buy the packet of pink scrunchies next to the cash register, too, which he did entirely on impulse. Girls liked scrunchies, right? And Kuwabara's hunches tended to be right, right?

Kuwabara hoped so. And Kuro-chan had been glad to see him, waiting like a little black dog by the front door when he got home as if summoned by those objects, so maybe he was onto something.

He'd see soon enough, he figured.

The chalk scraped and clicked against the wooden floor as he worked, loud in the thick silence. The rustle of the unfurled scroll and the rasp of the chalk were the only sounds in his still apartment. When he finished writing on the floor, he stood up and dusted good chalky hands on his jeans, surveying his handiwork with a critical eye. Yup, it looked good to him—even if he did say so himself. But should he get a second pair of eyes on this business? Briefly Kuwabara considered calling Yusuke, staring at the phone on its cradle in the kitchen for a good, long while before deciding against it. Yusuke would make fun of him for helping Kuro-chan, and then he'd probably ask questions about Yukina that Kuwabara did not want to answer, so, nope. No calling Yusuke tonight.

Kuwabara would be performing this ritual solo.

Fingers crossed he didn't screw this up.

He pulled the scroll from his waistband, unrolling it with a flutter of dry paper. The instructions at the bottom, written in outdated and archaic Japanese, seemed to indicate that it was very, very important the ritual not be interrupted once it began (but the language was so old, Kuwabara wasn't quite sure). Still, better safe than sorry. Kuwabara unplugged his phone and shut the blinds, squinting at the scroll for the next part of the instructions.

"Next part is… calling the spirit." He rolled the scroll up with a grin. "Huh. Well. That I can do, no problem." He walked toward the TV set in the corner. "I just gotta—"

Right on cue, there came a knock at the door.

Ah. So that's what he'd been forgetting: a "do not disturb" sign. Thank god they hadn't knocked a minute or two later, or who knew what might've happened. Kuwabara muttered a curse and put the rather creepy-looking scroll in the kitchen before peering through the peep hole in his front door. Through the warped glass he saw a young woman, maybe a little bit older than him. She didn't look threatening, but at the last second Kuwabara decided to keep the security chain on his door intact before he opened it. No sense letting whoever this was see the witchy circle on his floor and get spooked—not that her smile dimmed a single watt when Kuwabara only opened the door about three inches, chain still engaged across the gap.

"Uh. Hello?" Kuwabara said through the crack. "Yes?"

"Hi, neighbor!" the girl chirped. She wore a fluffy sweater over jeans, her cheeks round under her merry eyes, and her hair had been trimmed into a precise pixie cut he was certain Shizuru would have advised against. "Nice to meet ya! My name is Megumi and I've been wanting to introduce myself." She waved in an awkward but oddly charming way. "So, hi!"

"Hi?" He dipped a bow at her through the crack in the door, which she returned. "I'm Kuwabara."

"Great name. Very strong!" Her nose wrinkled; she took a big sniff. "You cooking in there?"

"Uh." He pushed the door shut another inch, to keep the scent of candle smoke at bay. "Yeah. I am."

"Cool! Smells great!" She waved to one side, down the hallway. "So I swear I'm not a stalker, but I know you moved in not too long ago, and my boyfriend and I were wondering if you wanted to come over for a beer and get to know each other—?"

His pulse leapt in his wrists. "Uh, sorry, a little busy cooking right now, but thanks!"

"Oh. Um." She waved again, crestfallen. "Well, next time you're feeling social—"

Kuwabara basically slammed the door in her face. He felt badly about it the moment the door slapped firmly into place in its frame, but as soon as she'd talked about getting together, he'd panicked. Now was just not the time, not that Megumi knew it. And besides, he wanted to make a good first impression (or at least a good second impression, since this one obviously hadn't gone very well). If she and her boyfriend saw the weird circle and all the candles on his floor, there was no way they'd want to be friends with him—and since it would be nice to have friends in the building, that was a risk he could not take. His college classmates all thought of him as the future-predicting oddity after that one time he'd warned them about an earthquake half an hour before it happened, and sure, his prediction hadn't started a witch hunt or anything, but it hadn't gotten him any friends, either. Instead it had put him on some weird social pedestal that made people look at him… funny. It was hard to describe. People thought he was cool, but in a novelty way, not the normal way that made you want to be friends with a guy. What he wouldn't do to get just one normal set of friends, who looked at him like a totally normal—

He took a deep breath.

Now wasn't not the time, man.

He'd worry about making it up to Megumi later.

"I just hope she doesn't think I'm a total freak," he muttered to himself, and he put the incident as far out of his mind as he could manage.

So: Back to the ritual. Where was he? Oh, right. Summoning the ghost. Kuwabara snagged the scroll off the kitchen counter and walked across the room, pushing the TV on its wheeled stand to the edge of the ritual site (right at the end of its power cord; he thanked his lucky stars it was long enough to reach). Tiptoeing across the circle so as not to disturb his painstaking chalk work or light his pants on fire in the candles' open flames, Kuwabara flipped on the TV and surfed through the channels. There was always a _Friends_ marathon on at this time of day on ZUMB network, and—yes, there it was. "So no one told you life was gonna be this way?" sang the Ramones as he found the right station, and right on cue, he felt eyes bore into the back of his neck.

Kuro-chan had crept out of the closet to hover in the bedroom doorway, bloodshot eyes trained on the TV set. Like usual, she had greeted him with a little shiver, and like usual, the sound of her favorite program had summoned her in moments. To her, this probably felt like any other night—although Kuwabara wasn't sure if that was good or bad. Maybe he should try to warn her in advance about what was about to happen?

… but, he realized, he really had no _idea_ what was about to happen. So. He couldn't exactly warn her, now could he? And that was the end of that shortlived internal debate.

As Kuro-chan crept into the room, Kuwabara smiled at her; she skittered forward, darting under the shadow of the couch and out of sight like a particularly shy mouse. She hadn't entered the circle to watch the show, as Kuwabara had hoped she might, instead watching the TV from an awkward angle under the sofa. She wasn't used to sitting out in the open, preferring to watch from the space beneath the furniture. She needed to be in the circle to start the ritual, though. Kuwabara scratched his nose, a new tactic eventually forming in his head.

"Uh. Kuro-chan?"

The eyes mired in shadow beneath the couch rolled toward him. She made a sound like dead leaves crackling under a foot.

"I, uh. I got you a present?" He picked his way to the center of the chalk circle and knelt beside the items piled there. "Here. See what I got you?"

Her eyes drifted to the objects at his feet, but she did not move.

"See? Right here?" He lifted the items one by one. "It's the Enterprise. And a sparkly scrunchie. And the Eiffel Tower. And a coffee cup." Kuwabara held up the cup and turned the sketched logo on the front to face her. "Look, I even drew the logo for Central Perk on it, and…" He held her eyes a second, then dropped his head and sighed. "You're not buying this at all, are you?"

Kuro-chan stayed silent. The silence seemed to say, yeah; what did you expect?

"Oh, man." Kuwabara threaded a hand through his pompadour, pomade slick under his fingers, as Genkai's words flashed through his head. "This is the path I walk now, huh? Too bad it's not a problem I can just punch away like a—"

He stopped midsentence, because he heard a shuffle.

Kuro-chan, like a puddle of liquid shadow, slid out from under the couch. Hugging the floor and as formless as smoke, she eked across the floor and paused at the edge of the chalk circle. Kuwabara held his breath, hoping she wouldn't recognize the circle for what it was—and soon enough she breached the outline on his floor and sluiced over the symbols, her weightless presence not disturbing the chalk in the slightest. So she wasn't scared of the ritual site, it seemed. Kuro-chan moved around the objects he'd selected for her in a fluid circle, surveying them from every angle before she moved her body atop them, obscuring them from view. Kuwabara stood up in increments as the blob of her body hunkered down, a little burble of curiosity cheeping from her as he backed away and out of the circle.

"Hey, all right. That's my girl," murmured Kuwabara. He grabbed the scroll and opened it. "Now let's see. Where're the magic words, again?"

Kuro-chan did not reply. She just gave another rattle of happiness as Kuwabara inspected the scroll. Soon enough he found the words he needed scrawled at the bottom of the parchment, and with a final look at Kuro-chan, Kuwabara steeled himself to start.

He took a deep breath.

He began to chant.

The effect was as immediate as it was obvious.

Kuro-chan froze, her body freezing like water in a snap of absolute zero cold. As Kuwabara spoke, she shuddered with the vibrations of a struck gong before streaking toward the couch, trying to hide—but as she hit the edge of the chalk circle, the quartz crystals flashed platinum. A faint white light the consistency of fading mist shot upward from the chalk, hemming her in and keeping her contained. The candles around the edge of the circle burned bright; their flame streamed upward, nearly to the ceiling, sending a wash of searing heat across Kuwabara's face. The shadows in the room seemed to undulate, but Kuwabara (who saw this in his periphery, eyes locked on Kuro-chan) didn't dare to look to confirm.

He didn't dare look, because Kuro-chab's reaction brooked no room for distraction.

As the light and the heat struck her, Kuro-chan shrieked. It was a sound Kuwabara heard more with his mind than his ears, nails on a chalkboard and screws sinking into flesh, a cry of pain and fear and agony and confusion that made his skin crawl. The lightbulb overhead flickered and then burst in a shower of hot sparks—but though Kuwabara's voice quavered as glass pattered onto his hair, he did not let his rhythmic chanting fall out of sync. Even as scents assailed his nose, aromas of water and earth and wood rising to a fever pitch with perternatural intensity, he did not dare falter. Even as the quartz glowed brighter and brighter, stinging his watering eyes, he did not dare stop. Kuro-chan screamed again, and again, louder and louder as she surged up the sides of the light-barrier in flagrant defiance of gravity, but the light formed a dome over the circle and held her fast. She fell to the center of the circle and thrashed in place, jagged spikes of black energy jutting from her body like someone was stabbing a balloon from the inside toward the out.

At that sight and at the sound of her screams, Kuwabara paused, but the light stared to fade and he hastily kept chanting, chanting those nonsense words he couldn't make sense of—and yet, somehow inside him they gained meaning and intention, searing purity and goodness singeing his throat as pure _light_ forced itself into the world and headed straight for Kuro-chan. He shouted over the sound of Kuro-chan's scream, a rising sense of purpose he did not understand but was helpless to heed filling his chest near to bursting, and the light keeping Kuro-chan inside the circle grew brighter, brighter, so bright Kuwabara almost could hardly look at it, and then he _couldn't_ look at it, shutting his eyes against the glare, and yet the chant stayed lodged inside his mind and poured out his mouth even though he could no longer read the scroll—

There came a huge flash, eventually, one he saw even through his closed eyelids, and Kuro-chan gave one final scream. The odd chant that had poured unbidden form his mouth trickled dry like a drought-strangled stream as a wind picked up, slicing against his skin and streaking through his hair like the fingers of a banshee. He opened his eyes just in time to see Kuro-chan shrink into a ball of dense shadow no bigger than his closed fist and sit there, silent as the grave, in the center of the circle.

The scents of water, earth and wood began to fade.

The candles sputtered and flickered out.

The crystals ceased to glow.

The light surrounding the circle vanished.

A moment passed—and then like water down a drain, Kuro-chan was sucked out of the room and past the bedroom doorway, flying through the air and out of sight.

The bedroom door banged shut after her.

Kuwabara stared.

He dusted glass shards from his shoulders with shaking hands.

"Well," he said to no one. "That was… different."

The scroll provided no instructions as to what to do next, so he did what he thought seemed reasonable: He cleaned. He scrubbed chalk from his floor and put his furniture back in place. He gathered up the quartz crystals and put them in an old pasta sauce jar, because he didn't know what else to do with them. Throwing them away didn't seem right; they had glowed, after all. He put the bowls of dirt and water and wood (well, pencil) shavings in the garbage. No use for them anymore, probably, and they didn't look as worth saving as the crystals. Though he concentrated on his cleaning routine with as much of his attention as he could, it was impossible to resist the urge to stretch his awareness outward, letting his energy wash over the closet and the ghost he felt bubbling and twitching in its corner.

He dropped the dustpan he'd been holding when he felt her.

Kuro-chan was… changing. Shifting like origami, creasing and buckling and folding over on herself like a crane taking shape from paper, colors and textures emerging from the being that was Kuro-chan with every pleat and fold of what she had been, and of what she would soon become—or what she had always been beneath her darkness, Kuwabara thought. Or perhaps paper was too rigid an analogy for her. Perhaps she was more like a flower emerging from beneath a blanket of stifling snow—but, no. Snow was too bright for the swamp from which she bloomed, every new and naked petal of herself unfurling with a spark of radiance, of raw, precious, tender energy as vulnerable and fragile as an unfurling leaf…

Kuwabara pulled his power from her as gently as he could.

This was a private moment for Kuro-chan, he sensed. He would not disrespect her by intruding where he was not invited. He was a better man than that, for sure.

Once he cleaned the apartment (awareness kept carefully close, away from Kuro-chan's private retreat) he cooked himself dinner. Night had fallen long before; he carried dinner to the couch and ate off his lap, the TV tuned to the usual _Star Trek_ marathon that came on this time of night. Picard and Riker were negotiating with the Borg on a distant planet as he slurped noodles and broth—recipe courtesy of Urameshi, which is why it tasted so nice. He put the empty dishes in the sink when he was finished, poured himself a big glass of juice, and settled back in, a textbook on his lap, but he didn't open it until the episode finished and the credits began to roll.

"Now, let's see," he said as he lifted his book atop his knees. "Cell division and mitosis. What chapter was it?"

He thumbed through the book during a commercial break, eventually finding the correct page. He barely heard the next episode come on, title sequence soft and music faint in his distracted ears as he read his book and marked important parts with a highlighter.

He certainly heard _her_ voice when she spoke, though.

He could not have missed it if he tried.

* * *

NOTES

 _Place your bets as to the results of the ritual, friends! Also, this has been the longest chapter yet. Huzzah!_

 _This story's update schedule is going to change very soon. I'll be posting a chapter this Saturday, as usual (it's from Kuro-chan's POV), but after that I'll need to shift gears. Lucky Child is returning from its hiatus on December 8 and will be updating every other week. I think I'll post Ghost chapters on LC's off weeks, which means I'll be posting a chapter of something every week. Hope that's OK with all of you._

 _For the record, Kuro-chan's narration chapters… well, after chapter 10, they'll be a little different than before. Both the structure of this fic and its update schedule are, fittingly, changing just as a big change has happened in this story's narration. All things considered, I'm OK with that._

 _Many thanks to those who chimed in on chapter 8. Was moving all last week/weekend and your words kept me going through the fatigue. You rock:_ _431101134, OdinsReaper, Laina Inverse, Blaze1662001, AnimePleasegood, destinyswindow, Dagdoth Fliesh, IronDBZ, Issa, DeusVenenare, SterlingBee, o-dragon and a guest!_


	10. Chapter 10: I

Warnings: None

* * *

The Ghost in You

Chapter 10:

"I"

* * *

 _Her_ light was gentle, warm, and soft.

 _This_ light—new and unexpected, a shock to the system and a slap to her dark face—was none of those things.

This was the light of a burning forge, chasing impurities from molten metal with the beat of hard hammers and the grasp of heavy tongs. This was the light of an arid desert, sun burning flesh and dazzling eyes until they stung and streamed. This was the hot, dry heat of an engine, rumbling and churning toward some distant destination she was powerless to predict. It ploughed into her like a runaway train, sweeping her up on its inexorable tide like a wave of magma sweeps away a shard of broken glass, melting it and mutating it and making it one with itself, until she was the light and the light was her and she could sense nothing but its burning expanse in every fiber of her screaming self.

But then the light faded.

The light faded, and leaved her be.

Raw and reeling, it was all she could do to scrape her broken consciousness from the ground and flee—flee back to the bottom of her closet and curl up there, alone, in the cool and comforting dark—while her light remained in the living room, silent as she fled.

She fled to the dark for comfort. To take refuge from her precious light, and from the horrible light her light had brought with him.

Only the dark wasn't as comforting as it had once been.

She shivered in it. Her consciousness writhed in the dark, racked with chill like a desert at night, like a forge cooled by winter, an engine bereft of fuel left to linger in a junkyard. The dark ripped at her like hands, nails digging into mental flesh, buffeting at her mind with a bat's insistent wings. These feelings confused her. These sensations angered her. The dark had been her home for so long, but now it grated.

Why did it grate so badly?

She reached for the dark, to wrap herself in it and be comforted.

The darkness slipped through her fingers-that-were-not-fingers like air, leaving them stiff and pained.

She shivered as the darkness passed over her, but cold though it felt, it did not soothe the burn of the light. It had been one thing to view her light from afar, and to feel his gentle warmth on her face from a distance, but it had been another, painful thing entirely to look at the light that had burned. It was another thing to touch that light, to feel it burrowing into every last one of her spiritual pores and then explode outward, taking the darkness with it—

Oh.

So that was why the darkness was no longer comforting.

The darkness was no longer inside her. Not anymore.

One does not take comfort in things one no longer is.

Darkness did not lie within, but still it clung close to her being, cloistering her cold in its grip. It held her together from without, but at its touch she shivered again. She shuddered. She quaked in her closet and wrapped her arms-that-were-not-arms around herself, as if to keep from flying apart, or from shaking into nothing, dissolving into so much blackened chaff on the wind. She would surely fall to pieces at this rate. If she had skin, she'd say it felt like her skin-that-was-not-skin was being peeled away, sloughing off in painful strips like the wrappings of a charred mummy. Surely if they all fell away, she would find that nothing lay beneath. Surely she was not substantial enough, not strong enough to exist without the darkness of herself. Afraid, she clung to these strips of her fading self as one clings to a life raft, desperate and dying and—

A bit of herself slipped through her incorporeal fingers. She scrabbled at it, but she could not clutch it back to herself in time.

But her panic, when she felt what lay beneath, faded away.

What remained behind, exposed under that stripped away excess, felt as soft and new as bread fresh out of a warm oven.

She stilled.

Kuro-chan did not have skin. But if she were pressed to make a comparison, she'd say her not-skin felt like it was being pricked with iron nails. Each point pricked her and burned, and the skin beneath singed clear away, darkness shedding inch by inch, and this hurt like breaking bones—but with every rip of darkness shredding from her being, and with every bit of darkness that she lost, she gained something new, instead.

At first, she had no idea what these somethings were.

But then she realized—color.

The wall beside her was pale grey.

And around her—texture.

The floor beneath her was wooden, crossed with whirling grain.

And beneath the door to her closet—light.

Not _her_ light. Not the light that had burned, either. This third light was yellow. From a bulb. A bulb beyond the closet, in the bedroom, probably.

She stared at this light (for now she had the ability to stare, she realized with a jolt) for a long time, as around her color grew bolder. Texture grew more distinct. Light grew brighter, in a way that did not burn, but one that merely illuminated the color, and the texture, and the interior of her closet as it came at once into sharp relief—

She looked down (because she now could aim in which direction she looked).

She saw hands.

She flexed them, and saw that they belonged to her.

And with that—as simply and as miraculously as breathing—she knew herself again.

What a wonderous thing, to know oneself after so long lost in the dark.

She sat there for a long time, knowing herself again. She knew it was a long time because time made sense to her, at last. She sat there looking at the light and the wood and the closet door for a long, long time, flexing her hands and turning her head and feeling the passage of time, until she heard something from outside. A thump, and words. Words spoken in a voice she recognized, though she wasn't quite sure from where.

"Let's see. Cell division and mitosis," the voice asked. "What chapter was it?"

Kuro-chan did not know the answer to this question. But, with her newfound sense of self, she moved at the sound of this voice. Eager to hear this voice again, she left the closet, and then she—

No.

Not "she."

And then _I_ left my closet, and I walked forward, into the light.

* * *

NOTES:

 _This new pronoun shift, from third person to first, might seem odd to some. Kuwabara's POV will continue to be told in third. I want to be sure to mention that this pronoun change will make sense in time, I promise, and is very much an intentional part of the way this story is structured._

 _We switch to a biweekly update schedule now. See you next time on December 15. Unless anyone wants me to post something on Wednesday, lol, so let me know in the comments!_

 _Thanks for joining us last time, to the following lovely people: Deamachi, 431101134, Laina Inverse, Blaze1662001, Dagdoth Fliesh, read a rainbow, Aly Goode, Kimimakku, CryClea7, LadyGhoul1, SterlingBee!_


	11. Ch 11: Pinkie Swearing with a Dead Girl

Warnings: None

* * *

The Ghost in You

Chapter 11:

"Pinkie Swearing with a Dead Girl"

* * *

She said, perhaps, the thing Kuwabara expected least to hear upon seeing her again.

She said: "Oh, cool! It's a Q episode!"

Kuwabara took a deep breath.

He turned.

He froze.

Kuro-chan (because that was who she was, right?) sat a few feet away from him, perched on the armrest of the couch with long legs crossed primly at the ankle. He could have mistaken her for a real, live girl had the aforementioned couch not remained completely undented under her nonexistent weight, but that was one of the few clues visible she wasn't actually alive—that and the tingle in Kuwabara's psychic sense at the sight of her, but that was beside the point. She wore ballet flats and leg warmers, a tiny pair of denim shorts, and a bomber jacket embroidered with an enormous silver bird across the back. That last garment was just barely zipped and worn off the shoulder, left to pool around her elbows in a cascade of black and pale pink silk. Her loose-fitting tanktop, also worn elegantly off one shoulder, said STAR on the front in enormous, glittering letters. If the outfit alone didn't scream the 1980s, then her high side-ponytail (bleached, of course) and bubblegum pink lipstick certainly helped sell the look, as did the yellow silk scarf she'd tied around her slender neck like an ascot. Tiny heart-shaped studs glimmered in her earlobes as her head tilted to the side, and even though it wasn't corporeal, her jewelry still somehow managed to sparkle.

So did her eyes, somehow.

"Man, Q is hilarious," the girl who was a ghost intoned in a high, velvety voice. She leaned forward and put her chin on her hand, pink lips curling, bright brown eyes locked on the TV screen. "Also an enormous dickhead, yeah, but hilarious."

"Uh," said Kuwabara.

"Hmm?" Her chin lifted off her hand; she turned to look at him, blinking her enormous eyes a few times in surprise. Then she smiled again, a dimple appearing on her left cheek. "Oh, hi. What's your name?"

"Uh," Kuwabara repeated.

"Uh?" Her deftly plucked brows knit together. "That's not a name."

He didn't have the strength to argue. "K-Kuro-chan?" Kuwabara said, hardly daring to believe this… this _woman_ had been lurking beneath the darkness all along.

Her brow knit further. "Um. Your name's… Kuro-chan? Like the cartoon cat?"

"What? No!" Kuwabara sputtered. " _Your_ name's Kuro-chan!"

"What?! No!" she said, equally aghast. "No, it isn't!"

"It isn't?"

"No!" A bright laugh filled the room, as joyful and as teasing as the glint in her eye and the crooked tilt to her mischievous grin. "I'm Roza, silly."

Kuwabara's mouth worked. "Roza," he repeated.

"That's my name; don't wear it out," she said with a sing-song cadence.

"Oh. Uh. OK. And, uh." He scratched the back of his neck. "I'm Kuwabara."

Her nose wrinkled when she giggled. "Why didn't you just say so?" But then she waved one hand in his face with a frantic shush, neon blue-painted nails glittering in the light. "Oh, shh, shh! It's back! It's back!"

For a minute, he had no idea what she meant. He stared at her, too stunned to regulate his open-mouthed confusion, as she listed off of the armrest and lay on her side beside him on the couch; the cushion didn't dip at all beneath her, reminding him with a jolt that this was, indeed, his Kuro-chan transformed. Her head lolled on her neck; she looked at him upside down with a wide smile, hair falling in a silky wave over one bare shoulder.

"You're gonna like this episode," she said, resting her cheek on her palm. "I can feel it."

Kuwabara swallowed.

And then Kuro-chan—no.

And then _Roza_ laughed again, that same breezy laugh she'd laughed before, so different from the grating laugh of Kuro-chan, and turned back to watch TV.

Kuwabara didn't watch the TV with her. Was too busy staring at her, taking in her colorful clothes and heart-shaped face and her warm, coppery skin (warm, coppery skin that had the blue tint of death underneath, but he tried not to focus on this unsettling detail). From the tips of her silver shoes to the mole by her left eye, she was the exact opposite of whatever he'd expected (though if you asked him to articulate what it was, exactly, he'd been expecting, Kuwabara would doubtless come up short). She couldn't be more than 18—or at least, her ghost didn't look any older than that. Did it reflect the age she had been when she died? For all the ghosts he'd met, Kuwabara still wasn't exactly sure how… well. How they _worked_ , for lack of a better term. Lost in thoughts his brain couldn't quite turn into words, he stared for probably two minutes without moving, until her eyes flickered in his direction. At which point his cheeks colored, face flushing with heat as he looked up and away.

"Um." He swallowed down the nerves in his throat. "So."

Roza didn't move, nor did she look away from the TV when she voiced a throaty, "Hmm?"

He swallowed again; his voice came out higher than he wanted it to when he said, "Roza, huh?"

"That's my name." She grinned at the TV. "Ha! Oh, Q. You rascal."

"Got a last name?" Kuwabara asked.

"Hmmm…" Still her eyes did not leave the TV. "Not that I recall."

"Age?"

"Uh… maybe 18, 19, 20 or so?"

"Where'd you go to high school? College?"

Finally she looked at him, but only after she rolled her eyes. "Geez, man, I dunno, somewhere in Tokyo, I think—but is this _Star Trek_ time or interrogation hour? Huh?"

It was clear she would prefer the latter, because she went right back to watching TV. Kuwabara closed his textbook, replacing it with his notebook for class atop his knee. He pulled the pen from its spiral binding and uncapped it, posing ink over paper with a determined clearing of his throat.

Her eyes, once again, moved in his direction—but then once more they rolled, and she went back to _Star Trek._

Kuwabara remained undeterred. "Any siblings?" he asked. "Maybe remember your parents' names?"

"No to both," Roza grumbled—but Kuwabara didn't miss the barest of hesitations before she spoke, nor the nervous way she started fiddling with the tip of her ghostly ponytail. She very carefully did not look at him. "What are you gonna ask for next, my social security number?"

"Hey, don't get mad," Kuwabara said. "I'm just trying to help."

"Help?" That finally got her attention, head tilting back until she looked at him upside down. "Help what?"

Kuwabara gaped. "Help… help _you_ , of course."

"What does that even mean, though?" Roza surged upward and angled herself toward him, on her knees on the couch with expression most skeptical. "Do I look like I'm in distress to you?"

"I'm trying to help you resolve your unfinished business!" Kuwabara told her.

But she just frowned. "My unfinished _what?_ "

"You know. Your unfinished business." He waved at her up and down. "Since you're a ghost and all."

Her eyes widened. "I'm a—?"

Roza stopped talking. She hopped off the couch and walked away toward the kitchen and back again, fingers carding through her short bangs. Kuwabara put his arm along the back of the couch and watched her pace, not sure what the heck he was supposed to do—but then Roza curled her legs up, knees coming to her chest as her arms went around them.

She floated, of course. She floated in place on thin air, teeth worrying her lower lip as she thought things through—and then she gasped and did a double-take at the ground below. Kuwabara probably would've laughed had she not looked utterly horrified at this development, and had she not then uncurled, raised her hand high above her head, and shoved said hand straight through her stomach and out the back of her body. Roza craned her neck over her shoulder, spinning in place like a dog chasing its tail as she tried to look at her own wiggling fingers. Yeah, Kuwabara didn't want to laugh anymore. Watching a person do that to themselves was honestly a little gross.

"Oh," Roza said, mostly to herself. Her feet slowly drifted to the floor again; she stared at her fingers as if they had wronged her. "Oh. Right."

Kuwabara's brow knit. "Did you forget?"

Somehow her ghostly cheeks took on a bit more color. "No, I did not forget," she retorted, like she thought he was stupid for asking.

But Kuwabara wasn't stupid. "You _did_ forget," he said. "Wow."

"Look, I haven't really been in the most introspective of mindsets lately, OK?" She glared like a cat whose tail Kuwabara had just stepped on. "It's all just been this big long dark string of… dark. Dark-dark crying and moaning and whatnot. Like I was trapped in a swamp made of pure emo." She wrapped her arms around herself and gave an exaggerated shiver. "Ugh. It was the _literal worst_." But at that she looked at him with new interest, realization dawning behind her eyes. "How the hell did you snap me out of it, anyway?"

"Purification ritual," Kuwabara said.

She appeared unconvinced. "Oh-kay," she said with a wry chortle. "Whatever you say, man."

"Hey, don't look at me like that," Kuwabara said. "It worked, didn't it? And now you're you again, so all's well that ends well, right?"

"I mean," Roza said. "I guess so?"

She started picking at her nail beds. Kuwabara wasn't sure how personal grooming worked for ghosts, but she peeked at him from under her bangs and he got the sense she was actually just putting on a show. Trying to avoid talking to him, maybe. And that was the last thing she should be doing, since he was going to finish her unfinished business, so he scribbled on his notebook to make sure his pen was working and cleared his throat again.

"So why don't we start at the beginning, huh?" he said. "You're Roza. You've been sort of… uh, ghost-depressed for a while now. Do you remember anything before that? Before the long dark-dark-swamp of pure emo?"

"Um…" She drifted back toward the couch, perching once again on the armrest opposite him. "Not really, no."

"C'mon," Kuwabara urged with an encouraging smile. "You must remember _something_."

She shrugged. "But I don't."

"Try, Roza. Think back." He did his best Kurama impression, trying to make his rough voice sound soothing. "Think back, relax, and open your mind to—"

But Roza wasn't having it. Her eyes flashed as she said, "I don't remember anything, OK?"

"But that's not—" Kuwabara scooted closer, searching her face. "That's not possible, though, right?"

She turned away, expression obscured by the fall of her ponytail. "Stop it," she said, but without much heart.

"How can we finish your unfinished business and send you to heaven if you can't remember what your unfinished business even is?" he said.

One fist clenched atop her thigh. "I said stop it!"

"Roza, please." He reached for her, then realized it was useless and pulled back his hand. "I know it's uncomfortable, but if you could at least _try_ to remember how you died—"

Her face jerked toward him; black flooded from her pupils to fill her eyes entirely, skin paling to the color of blue- tinted milk in an instant. _"I said stop, dammit!"_ came her hissed rebuke—and above him something popped. The room darkened. Glass clattered to the floor in a crystalline rain, musical and deadly.

Kuwabara froze.

Her hair had lost its chestnut color, that color that comes from a good bleaching, turning stark black and clinging to her long neck like vines covered in thorns. It crackled and skittered from the end of her ponytail over the back of the couch and down her chest, matting her skin and ghostly clothing with the ichor of darkness itself. Her hair from before the ritual, when she had been barely a ghost at all—but then Roza gasped. The hair vanished. The black retreated into her pupil and her eyes and skin regained their proper color.

Kuwabara wasn't sure when he'd stood up and run from her, his back pressed to the wall across the room, but that was where he found himself as Roza became herself once more. Before he could calm the frantic pound of his heart or bring spit back into his dry mouth, Roza put her hand over her lips.

Above her hand, somehow her phantasmal eyes managed to well with tears.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm, I'm sorry—I didn't mean to—"

Her eyes turned black again.

Kuwabara flinched.

Roza flinched, too, at the sight of his recoil. She covered her face with her hands, stood, and fled—flying from the room and ghosting straight through his bedroom door to vanish into the room beyond.

In the distance, Kuwabara heard a distraught and desolate wail.

It took him a minute to two to find the willpower to follow her. Once his heart stopped beating hard enough to break his ribs, though, he gingerly entered his bedroom. Walked to the closet. Stood outside its mirrored door and listened to the muffled sobs coming from behind it.

Kuwabara took a deep breath. He leaned his forehead against the mirror. Breath fogged over his reflection as he spoke.

"Roza," he said. "Roza. Hey. It's OK. You can come out."

Roza's crying stopped, but she did not reply.

"I won't ask you about any of that bad stuff again, OK?" he said. "I won't ask. I promise."

Still, Roza did not reply. Kuwabara shifted from foot to foot, taking a deep breath.

"I promise as a man who always keeps his word, I won't ask you about anything you're not comfortable with." He waited a tic, ears straining for some sign she'd heard. "OK, Roza? I promise. I won't ask you anything else. You can trust me. I promise."

"…you really, really promise?"

She spoke so softly, Kuwabara almost didn't hear her. He nodded even though she couldn't see, the mirror cool against his forehead.

"I really, really promise," Kuwabara said. "So will you come out?"

The door vibrated a little. A hand bedecked with glittering nail polish thrust straight out of the mirror like it had been mounted and stuffed a hung there as a trophy. But then the pinkie wiggled, because this was no stuffed trophy after all (even if it was dead), and Roza said, "You pinkie swear?"

Kuwabara rubbed his neck. "Uh…"

He gave it the good college try, pinkie swearing with a dead girl, but his hand passed straight through hers without connecting. Tough to describe how she felt against his skin. Kind of like a limb falling asleep mixed with cold water and a mild electric shock, if he had to try. He passed his pinkie through hers a few times before she sighed and pulled her hand back inside the closet.

"Well," she said. "I guess that'll have to do."

The door vibrated again. Roza emerged from behind the mirror, phasing straight through it, toes just barely skimming the carpet, clothes and face and hair back to their Technicolor new normal. For a second she didn't meet his eyes, running her hands up and down her ponytail as she stared shyly at the floor. Kuwabara wasn't sure what to say, but luckily Roza beat him to the punch.

"I think we missed the Q episode, but the next one's pretty good, too." She looked at him through her bangs. "Want to watch it with me?"

"Sure," Kuwabara said.

But when they went back into the living room he stepped on the glass from the lightbulb Roza had somehow shattered, and he realized would need to clean it up and replace the overhead light before they resumed TV time, and Roza was so embarrassed about the trouble she'd caused that she went right back into her closet for the rest of the night and refused to come out until the following day.

As Kuwabara swept up the shattered glass and tried not to listen for the sound of muffled sobs, he had to wonder what, exactly, he had gotten himself into.

* * *

NOTES

 _I have a bunch of chapters pre-written, so I figured I should give y'all the big reveal before we start our biweekly update schedule. See you this Saturday with Lucky Child update, and see you on Dec. 15 with another chapter of The Ghost in You._

 _Roza is my baby and I love her._

 _Thanks to all those who chimed in last week. You're angels:_ Blaze1662001, destinyswindow, 431101134, Ladyghoul1, curse of kings, read a rainbow, Deamachi, SterlingBee, Laina Inverse, Easily Amused 93!


	12. Chapter 12: I Am Dead & You Did Ask

Warnings: None

* * *

The Ghost in You

Chapter 12:

"I Am Dead & You Did Ask"

* * *

It took some convincing, but eventually Kuwabara managed to persuade Roza that he wasn't mad about the lightbulbs. Three days after her awakening and on the evening of the day Kuwabara finally got it through her head he wasn't upset at her, he opened his front door to find her standing only inches past the threshold. The door swung straight through her, leaving them standing nose to nose even before he could walk inside.

"Hey, Kuwabara! Welcome home!" She stood with one heel pressed to the middle of her other foot, like a ballerina or something, not that Kuwabara knew much about dance. Hands clasped behind her, face lit up like a Christmas tree, Roza asked: "Did you have a good day?"

"Uh. Yeah." He stepped around her gingerly because walking through her felt like it might be rude—again, not that he'd know. "It was fine."

"That's great!" She trailed after him as he put down his bag and took off his shoes, still beaming. "What classes did you have today?"

"Uuum. Biochemistry, mostly." He circled around her to shut the door, glad she'd moved out of the path of its swing at last. "There was a unit on—"

Call him a stereotyper, but he wasn't sure somebody as… um… _fashionable_ as Roza would have any interest in his science classes, but she listened with rapt attention and wide eyes as he told her about the lesson plan and all the little pieces of the lectures he'd filed away inside his head. "Neat!" and "wow!" and "that's so cool!" punctuated every third fact he relayed, and when he sat down to do his homework, she looked over his shoulder and read his notes right along with him. Roza hovered behind him as she looked, body parallel to the floor like she lay on her stomach on an invisible plank, chin propped on her elbows as she studied his lessons. So he'd been wrong. Maybe she liked science, after all.

"I gotta do all these equations tonight." When Roza just stared at him, smile eager and open, he picked up his pencil. "OK, look. You take this formula and you use it with these numbers, and you derive the numbers from—"

Roza nodded along, and when he finished the first problem, she let out a sigh. "Gosh. That looks hard."

He shrugged, embarrassed but pleased. "It's not so bad once you get the hang of it."

"I was more of a literature and history girl, myself." (A statement at which Kuwabara tried not to react, let alone ask questions; he didn't want to scare her back into the closet, but had she just remembered something about herself?) Roza extended a hand over his shoulder and skimmed her finger along the equations, not quite touching the paper below. "It's cool you know how to do this so easily."

The admiration in her voice made his chest swell. "Heh. Yeah, it is cool." He gestured at the book with his pen again. "Want to learn how to do it? I can teach you, if you want."

"Really?" Her body swung downward, ghost sitting cross-legged beside him as if she rested on an invisible chair. "Sure! I'd love that!"

And that was how Kuwabara started teaching advanced bio-chem to the spirit of a dead girl from the 1980s, and that was how his nights with Roza usually ended up going from there on out.

Truth be told, Kuwabara's schedule didn't change a lick after Roza's transformation. Sure, she was a much better conversationalist than she had been before the ritual, but that was about it, really. He left the TV on for her during the day and came home at night to find her waiting, ready to hear about his classes and asking a hundred questions about where he'd been, what he'd seen, and the people she'd spotted on the street from the window. Roza was _extremely concerned_ about the direction fashion was headed since the last time she'd bothered to note it, a fact she lamented both often and loudly. "Are those _denim chinos_ I see down there?!" she once shrieked, causing the lights overhead to flicker. "The world went to sartorial hell while I was away!" she moaned most nights, throwing herself dramatically against a wall with wrist pressed to her forehead—but she offered Kuwabara tips on the fit of his pants and how to better cleanse his T-zone and reduce redness in his cheeks, so he didn't mind her rants about the hideous nature of saddle-shoes too much at all.

Having Roza around… it wasn't a bad thing. The rhythm of his day didn't change once she gained both opinions and an ability to voice them. The same routine they'd developed before her awakening persisted after it without a hitch, with the minor addition of a light improvement to his grades (people learn best by teaching others, as the saying goes, and the more he explained his homework to Roza, the better his understanding of it became). When he wasn't teaching her chemistry, they mostly watched TV together, and each night she asked about his day every day and listened patiently while he talked, gasping and laughing and paying rapt attention to his news about the outside world. Pretty good way to spend an evening, Kuwabara thought. Heck, it was the same routine he'd had back when he lived at home, when he'd come back after class to find a waiting Yuki—

Anyway.

Kuwabara would never admit it aloud, but his apartment felt a little cheerier now that Roza un-lived in it. Would be nice if she did a few chores from time to time, but it wasn't like she was creating messes (aside from the occasional shattered bulb), so that was neither here nor there. Roza always greeted him with a big grin at the door and a cheery goodnight before he went to bed and she curled up in the closet. And on the nights when Kuwabara had to stay late at the library to study, it was nice to have someone waiting up for him to make sure he remembered to eat.

It could be worse, he reasoned.

It could be a lot worse.

He could still be living at home, with _her_.

* * *

He was doing some reading at the kitchen table, pen suspended between his teeth, when Roza asked, "Hey. Can you change the channel?"

Kuwabara grabbed the remote and pointed it at the TV, not even looking up as he flipped through the channels. He pressed the button over and over again until Roza said stop.

"And now back up three channels?" she said.

He did as asked, eyes locked on his book.

"Good, that's it." He heard her sigh. "Thanks. Man. Really wish I could do that myself. Or turn the page of a book." She released a low, piteous groan. "Ugh. To read again. What I wouldn't give!"

Kuwabara hummed an agreement, though he wasn't quite sure in that moment what it was, exactly, he'd agreed to. Wasn't paying enough attention, which is why he flinched and jumped in his seat when Roza floated into his periphery. She floated with hand on her chin near the ceiling above the table, legs folded at the thigh, one ankle bobbing as she thought. She drifted downward and flopped forward onto her belly, chin on her hands, ankle crossed over ankle behind her. Didn't quite touch the table. Just hovered there, staring at him, smile wide and winning.

"So. Like. Tell me about yourself," she said.

Roza had effectively obscured most of his homework, which lay spread out across the entire table in a disorganized spray. "Huh?" he said, squinting to see if maybe he could see through her (which he could, but only barely, and only if he caused himself severe eye strain).

"You. Tell me about you." She pointed at the textbook lying open between them. "I know you're pre-med and you want to be a doctor, but that's about it." Her pink lip jutted in a pout. "Your apartment is really bare. I didn't learn anything by snooping."

Kuwabara's eyes narrowed. "You snooped?"

"We-ell." A nervous laugh. "As much as someone who can't open drawers can snoop, anyway."

Sensing he wouldn't get to study until he satisfied Roza's need for conversation, he sat back in his seat and crossed his arms over his broad chest. "You know what's funny?" Kuwabara said. "You've managed to shut a door a few times, but you can't change the channel or open drawers. What's up with that?"

Roza's lips parted, then shut. She looked up at the ceiling and thought about it for a second. "Uh… I think, if I want to do something and I think about doing it too much, I can't do that thing." She thrust one wrist toward him and wiggled her fingers. "Like, you can think 'Move, arm!' all you want, but your arm won't move. To move it, you don't _think_ , you just _do_." Her hand returned to its spot beneath her chin. "And I haven't gotten the hang of just _doing_ yet."

Kuwabara nodded. "I think that makes sense. And you were pretty emotional when you slammed the doors and stuff. Maybe that emotion helped?"

"Maybe so."

"But none of that excuses your snooping."

"Ugh! I'm bored, OK?" She rolled onto her back and sprawled spread-eagle on the air. "Cut me some slack and just tell me something good!"

Her dramatics got his stern expression to crack under the weight of a smile. "OK, OK, I will." He put a hand to his jaw. "Uh. Well. Let's see. My name is Kuwabara Kazuma. I'm 22. I like the color blue and cats. Um?"

"Cats. Wow." Her deadpan expression did not match her words. " _So_ fascinating."

"Hey, I'm trying!"

She rolled to her stomach again, chin resting on her folded arms. "This is not curing my boredom, like, at all."

"What's that they say about beggars and choosers?" he grumbled, but she just stuck out her tongue. A quick rack of his brain provided a few more factoids, though he wasn't sure if she'd appreciate them. "I have a cat, in fact. Her name's Eikichi and she lives with my sister since this place doesn't allow pets."

"Oh, so _that's_ who you're on the phone with so much!" She grinned, propping her head up on her hands. "You call every Thursday evening for a chat with somebody named Shizuru, right?"

He blinked. "You noticed?"

"Of course I did. It's a small apartment. And I was wondering if Shizuru was a girlfriend or a sister. Looks like I have my answer." She swatted at his arm; her fingers passed through him with the feeling of icy water. "But anyway, a cat! _Cute!_ Do you get to see her much? Sister and cat both, I mean."

Kuwabara looked down at his papers. "Not really."

Roza frowned. "Why not?"

"Just…" His hands dropped below the table, tightening into fists against his thighs. "Because."

"… OK, then. Be vague," Roza grumbled. She rallied again after a second, grin returning in full force. "Where do they live?"

"… Sarayashiki."

Her chin lifted. "That's just a train ride away, though!" One brightly painted finger extended toward his chest. "You should totally go over some Sunday, take your homework, have a nice little—"

"Not gonna happen."

Her hand withdrew. She made a small noise of surprise at his hard tone, a tone he wasn't quite sure if he regretted. "But why?" she asked. "If you miss your cat, you should—"

His hand clenched atop his knee. "It's just not going to happen, OK?"

That time he didn't bother corralling his tone at all. Roza recoiled, reeling back and up as her knees tucked close to her chest. She glided up a foot or two, drifting toward the ceiling like a bit of dandelion fluff on a breeze. Even though she didn't have an actual body, Kuwabara somehow managed to hear it when she swallowed. It was a big, thick gulp of uncertainty, one punctuated by her hand as it ran down the length of her long ponytail.

"OK. I'm sorry." Her voice came small, Roza seeming to shrink inside her silk bomber jacket. "Clearly you have your reasons."

"Yeah," Kuwabara grunted. "I do."

He turned back to his homework as Roza drifted toward the TV, pointedly burying his nose in his textbook so he could scan the words therein—mostly because concentrating on them drowned out the nagging sense that maybe he had been rude just now and the other nagging suspicion that maybe Roza did not deserve it. She hadn't realized the rake she'd stepped on. She didn't know his history. She had no idea that waiting for him at home were not just his cat and sister, but also the women who had broken his heart into a million little pieces and—

"So." He flinched; Roza's voice sounded unexpectedly close to his ear. "I noticed you don't exactly have a lot of friends stopping by."

He let his book drop to the tabletop with a clatter. Roza hovered at his elbow, her glitter-eyed smile playing once again across her glossed lips. Carefully he picked his book back up, smoothing the pages flat as he cleared his throat.

"I mean, I guess that's true." He cleared his throat again. "What about it?"

She shrugged. "Nothin'." Roza hovered over the table and twisted in the air to face him. "Just seems like a young man might need friends, is all. Maybe a lady friend or two?"

At that she waggled her immaculately plucked eyebrows and winked. Kuwabara couldn't help but blush, burying his face in his book to block out the sight of her wicked smile. His actions only had her chortling, though, and at her throaty laugh he felt his ears grow hot.

"OK, OK," she said, still laughing. "That's clearly a touchy subject for you. I'll leave it alone." Her eyes peeked at him over the top of his book, but even though he couldn't see her lips, he knew she was still grinning. "But anyway. You should get some friends, man. I had _lots_ of friends when I was alive."

Kuwabara's ears cooled a little. "Did you?"

"Yeah. Sure!" She tossed her hair and pulled away, smiling with proud satisfaction. "I had _tons."_

"What were their names?"

He wasn't sure what prompted him to ask that. Kuwabara wasn't a cruel person by nature. Quite the opposite, in fact. But she'd already pushed his buttons by forcing the subject of… of _her,_ and here she was telling him to get more friends when _she_ didn't have any to speak of whatsoever. No friends other than Kuwabara himself, in fact—but what kind of friend was Kuwabara, anyway, asking a question he knew damn well she wouldn't be able to answer?

And sure enough, at the sound of his heat-seeking-missile of a query, Roza pulled back as if he'd tried to strike her. She zoomed backward toward the kitchen doorway, body straightening with a snap, toes hovering mere inches off the ground as her auburn hair turned black as pitch. Strands snapped and crackled around her face like strips of dry seaweed; her panicked eyes blackened, ichor filling them until it obscured the whites completely, her golden skin paling to the color of rotten milk as her chest hitched with labored breath—

Kuwabara stood up on reflex and flinched as his chair rattled across the tile floor. "Hey, hey. Sorry. It's OK," he said in the same soothing voice he'd used on many a skittish stray cat around the neighborhood. "You don't have to talk about it, Roza. I'm sorry I asked. It's OK, really, I promise."

He kept talking for a bit, rambling about how she didn't have to say anything and that he was sorry for asking (and really, he was sorry, because that had been cruel of him and he was not a cruel man) and eventually his soft speech calmed her down. Color returned to her skin; the black retreated to her pupils; the gloss and blush and mascara returned to her pretty face. She seemed to come back to herself with a start once her hair returned to normal. Roza grabbed her ponytail and stroked it with both hands, the way she always did when she was nervous, and looked around like she'd just woken from a deep sleep.

"Oh," she said. "Oh. Um." A long pause. "All right?"

And she wafted away from him, back over to the TV, where she sat a foot away from the screen with her knees clutched tight to her chest with both arms, enormous eyes trained on Monica and Phoebe as they argued over something trivial.

Kuwabara wasn't sure what to do at that point. His instinct was to comfort her, but he didn't know how to do that—and he was the one who'd upset her in the first place. Did he even have the right to comfort her?

In the end, he couldn't say, and he had homework to do. After maybe two minutes of staring at her in awkward silence, he sat back down at the table and hefted his textbook. He'd talk to her later, once she calmed down completely. Once she got back to being her usual, chipper self. Once she stopped staring at the TV with such desolation in her eyes and started being vivacious and funny and—

"Hey, Kuwabara?"

She spoke so softly, he almost didn't hear her. At the sound of her whisper he put down his book and twisted to face her in his seat. "Yeah?" he said, voice rising with a current of anxiety.

Roza hadn't moved from her spot. She hadn't even turned her head to look at him, liquid eyes still locked on the flickering TV set. Her lips barely moved when she murmured, "You'll let me know if I get annoying, right?"

He almost didn't hear her that time, either, but not because of her volume. He just blinked, knocked off balance in the worst way, until her words sank home. "What?" was all that came out of his mouth when he finally figured out how to talk again.

Roza's knees tucked closer to her chest. "I said—"

"I heard what you said." Kuwabara hesitated. "I mean, why did you say it?"

She didn't reply right away. She just stared at the TV some more, and then her neck bent until her forehead touched the tops of her knees. Her ponytail fell over her shoulder, obscuring her profile from view.

"I just." A long pause. "I just don't have anyone else to talk to but you, y'know?" But she didn't give him time to answer that, forging ahead in a soft, quiet rush. "And I know I talk a lot. So if I chatter too much or ask too many questions—all I'm saying is, it's OK if you tell me you can't talk right now. I'll understand and I'll leave you alone and make myself scarce. And I've got things I can do elsewhere, so it's cool. Like, I can just go take a nap." Her face lifted from her knees, a brave, quavering smile playing across her mouth. "Naps are the best!"

Although the quiet desperation in her monologue nagged at him, it was that final declaration that he could not bring himself to ignore. "You can sleep?" he asked, brow lifting.

"Well. No?" Her face screwed up. "It's more like just not being awake for a while, which isn't at all the same thing." Comprehension dawned in her bright eyes; now she finally smiled for real, as if happy to find the perfect words. "If I wasn't already dead I'd say it's almost close to dying, probably. You just stop being aware for a while, y'know? Like, you're _gone_ , but on purpose? Which means you can still come back again when you've had enough of being away. When you're dead, you can't do that."

A shiver coursed up his spine unbidden and in complete spite of her cheery tone. "That's morbid," Kuwabara said.

Roza gave him a Look. "Well, I _am_ dead, and you _did_ ask."

"I did. Right." Kuwabara hesitated for a moment. "Well. Anyway." He hesitated a moment longer. "You're not annoying, if that's what you're worried about. So you don't have to go, um, death-nap or anything. At least not right now. OK?"

She grinned. Her knees came away from her chest, out of that protective fetal position at long last. "That's good," Roza said with a pleased hum, but then she lifted one painted finger at him in accusation. "Now stop talking to the dead girl and do your homework, mister sir!"

He couldn't help but smile back. "Yes ma'am."

Satisfied, she turned away to watch more Star Trek. He kept watching her for a minute, though, keeping tabs on Roza from the corner of one eye as he pretended to study—and after a moment passed, her legs bent. She curled back into her ball and put her forehead on her knees, thin and brittle sadness emanating from her in waves like a gentle tide.

It hit him like a brick to the teeth.

She'd waited for him to look away before letting her posture change.

On the best of days, ghosts were never able to hide their emotions very well. Least of all from _him_. Least of all when he been the one to remind her of this crushing sadness in the first place—and wasn't that the grandest irony amid an evening full of them? He was Roza's only friend in the world, and he'd reminded her that besides him, she had no friends at all. Some friend he'd turned out to be. And there she was, trying to keep from upsetting or inconveniencing him when he'd been so rude to her earlier. Trying to protect him from her own persistent sadness—sadness that he had made worse in the first place.

Roza didn't have much, but she offered everything she had. And her world was so utterly tiny, wasn't it? She couldn't even leave the apartment, at least as far as he knew.

Next time, he'd take better care not to rub her face in the horrible truth of that. Next time, he'd try to be a better friend.

It was the least he could do for someone who had so little, after all.

… or was it?

* * *

NOTES:

 _Continuing with this story's rather odd update schedule, we'll be getting a medium-sized chapter this coming Saturday, Dec. 22, ahead of a larger chapter two weeks from now on Dec. 29. THREE CHAPTERS ON SATURDAY IN A ROW, Y'ALL! It doesn't make sense to post shorter chapters all spaced out when there's so much time between updates, so when small-ish chapters cycle into the rotation, they'll be posted... honestly, on whichever day I think is most appropriate, which in this case I think is next Saturday. I'll warn y'all when irregular postings happen ahead of time, of course._

 _Next chapter we get a peek into Roza's head, in-depth now that she's a person instead of a blob. Get excited!_

 _Thanks for reading! You rock: Deamachi, read a rainbow, Laina Inverse, 431101134, IronDBZ, Blaze1662001, OdinsReaper, DeusVenenare, Anime Please Good, Curse of Kings, Sterling Bee and ralynsevenfoldd!_


	13. Chapter 13: Ringing

Warnings: None

* * *

The Ghost in You

Chapter 13:

"Ringing"

* * *

The shower was running, the phone was ringing, and I wasn't used to that much sound and the combination of the two was driving me absolutely fucking _crazy_. I paced back and forth, back and forth as the phone rang and rang and rang _and rang and rang_ , and when the voicemail machine finally engaged, I almost sang with happiness.

But then the caller hung up.

 _And then they called back._

I let out a shriek (which I stifled when the kitchen lights flickered) and zoomed over to the bathroom door, phasing through and into the steam-filled room beyond like a needle through really really holey cross stitch cloth or something; I was too stressed for metaphors, _so sue me_. At that proximity the hissing shower drowned out the ringing of the telephone for the most part, and that was a win in my book.

But I could still hear the damn phone in the distance. _Ringing_. And that just wouldn't do.

Kuwabara sensed me the minute I entered the bathroom. "Roza, I told you—you make it really, really cold when you come in here!" he grated amid a chatter of chilled teeth. There followed a squeak of metal on metal; water hissed louder and steam billowed higher above the curtain. "Seriously, I'm gonna be out of hot water in two minutes at this point."

I ignored him. "The phone's ringing."

"Uh... OK?"

"It's _loud_." I couldn't quite keep the whine out of my voice. "When are you getting out of the shower, huh?"

"When I'm good and ready, I guess?"

"But it's been _for-ev-errrrr._ "

He grumbled, but the shower switched off and his hand crept around the curtain, feeling blindly for a towel. I started to reach for it on reflex, trying to hand it to him, but my fingers passed through his wandering ones without making contact. Kuwabara swore and snatched back his hand, muttering something about having just gotten warmed up and now needing to shower all over again.

I held my hand to my chest (funny how I could hold my hands and touch my hair but not touch anything else) and hung my head. "Sorry," I said.

"Oh—oh, sorry, no. It's OK, Roza. Promise." He grabbed the towel and pulled it past the curtain. "I'll be out in just a sec."

I didn't reply.

A moment passed.

The shower curtain wrenched aside with a rattle of metal on metal.

Kuwabara saw me.

His eyes widened.

He started shrieking.

I shrieked, too, mostly out of surprise; on reflex I covered my eyes with my hands because that's what you do when you see someone getting out of the shower, right? Not that I'd _seen_ anything, mind you—just a stripe of flesh tone bisected by a square of blue towel. Even through my hands (which apparently could block out my vision?) I could tell the lights had started flickering on and off overhead; Kuwabara yelled at me to calm down, and when I did enough to uncover my eyes, I found him standing there wearing a towel around his hips and a horrible scowl on his thin mouth.

"Why are you still here?!" he warbled, face the color of a stewed beet. "I thought you'd left!"

"You didn't tell me to leave!"

"I just assumed you'd go when I said I was getting out!"

"You did?"

"Of _course!_ " He looked at me like I was the biggest dumbass to ever walk the planet, dead or alive. "You're supposed to leave when someone gets out of the shower, Roza!"

That was true, but it just hadn't occurred to me. It wasn't like I'd taken a shower in… well, however long I'd been dead. "Well, I'm not used to social norms anymore and you need to cut me some slack, OK?!" I said, trying not to look cowed—and then I caught sight of something way more interesting than the discussion we were having and pointed one finger at his torso. "And also great abs; how often do you hit the gym?"

Turns out Kuwabara had abs you could probably grate cheese on, which made sense considering he had biceps like hams; dude was a full, muscly meal, apparently. His face went even darker at my blurted compliment. Embarrassment crept over my cheeks, too, though I have no idea if I was able to blush. Kuwabara didn't clue me in. He just grit his teeth and stalked past out of the bathroom, still dripping water, and muttered something about hitting the weight room every day before school.

The bedroom door slammed shut behind him.

I knew better than to follow him past that threshold.

And I just plain _couldn't_ follow him past the threshold when he stalked out of the bedroom and bid me a curt, red-faced goodbye at the front door, where he jammed on his shoes and stepped into the outside hallway without once looking at me properly. I got as close as I could get to him as he tried to leave, which wasn't very close at all considering I couldn't get past the front door and follow him into the hall, but whatever.

"Where are you going?" I said, hands braced on the frame as I tried desperately to lean into the hall—but it was like an invisible rubber barrier kept me in place, bouncing me back into the apartment like a ball against a wall. It was Sunday, and normally he just stayed home to do chores and study. Toes on the threshold, I asked, "Be back soon?"

He didn't look at me, eyes fixed on something over my shoulder. "Not sure." He shoved his hands into his pockets, looking down the hall in either direction as if to check for eavesdroppers (and maybe that's what he was going; no one else could see me, so he'd probably look a bit freaky if someone saw him talking to empty air). "Maybe not. I've got a lot to do."

"Oh."

We just stood there for a minute.

He took a deep breath—and then in a rush of breath he said, "If you were a boy-ghost and I was a girl-person, that would _not_ have been OK."

His face got even redder after he made that statement; the doorknob under his hand creaked, he gripped it so hard. Still he refused to look at me. I felt torn between hanging my head and glaring, so I did a combination of both and aimed my best glower at his tennis shoes. "I never said it was OK. And also I'm a feminist so you won't see any double standards about gendered treatment from me, all right?"

"OK. Well. Um." Another deep breath; I looked up as the red started to fade from his cheeks. "Just don't do that again, OK?"

"OK." I saluted, which was probably dorky, but I wanted to defuse the tension and wasn't sure how else to do it but by acting like a dork. "I promise to respect your boundaries and I apologize for the earlier mishap. I wasn't thinking and I'm sorry I made you uncomfy." My hand dropped as sincerity gripped me like a vice. "Uncomfy _blows._ "

"It's fine." His broad chest deflating as he released a long, slow breath of relief. "You said it yourself: You haven't had to think about this stuff for ages, so…" Kuwabara lifted his hand through the air, tracing a diagonal line toward the ceiling as he made a whooshing nose with cheeks puffed out. "Learning curve, y'know?"

"Right." I made the same motion and noise, which was silly and awkward of me, but nevertheless I did it because _oh my god I was such a fucking dork._ I cleared my throat. "Learning curve."

He nodded. I smiled back. He smiled back. I nodded. It occurred to me that the phone had stopped ringing off the hook. Not sure if Kuwabara noticed. Wasn't sure if I should even point it out. We stood there smiling and nodding at each other for about thirty seconds in silence until apparently it got just too awkward and Kuwabara blurted out a goodbye and slammed the door behind him.

His feet tromped off down the hallway.

There followed silence.

And then feet stomped back toward me, the door opened, and Kuwabara marched inside to turn on the TV. He left again without a word, just a somewhat manic grin and a wave. I waved back until the door shut in his wake, leaving me alone with Sunday afternoon's usual _I Love Lucy_ reruns. I stood there listening to Ricky rant about Lucy's latest failed attempt to break into show business in silence, tracking that odd light Kuwabara put off as he went downstairs and left the building. Only when that light—that odd luminescence I felt like sun on skin rather than light I could see with my eyes, warmth I could sense even though walls and even at a distance—faded did I let myself turn toward the TV with a long, slow sigh.

Moral of this story?

Kuwabara was… interesting, I guess.

I mean. He was _nice_. There was nothing wrong with him. The first time I saw him, muscular guy curled into a surprisingly compact ball in his chair, his bleached hair done up in a super old-fashioned pompadour, features all craggy and sharp and chiseled like he'd been carved out of stone, he had defied all my expectations. I'd expected my light (ugh, how corny of me to keep calling him that!) to be a little more… refined. Or maybe just better dressed? Kuwabara's pants with a tiny bit too baggy and long for him, although he'd let me give him tips that fixed the issue, but that's not the point. His sharp features had softened considerably since getting to know him; they were way less rigid than the stone they'd been carved of, expressive and funny and sympathetic in turns, and the light coming off of him in waves was just…

 _Wow._

Kuwabara, like I said, was nice. He was a ball of sunshine, and just to sit near him while he worked was like sunbathing on a beach in Tahiti (or somewhere tropical like that; my memory of geography was hazy, at best). The darkness from _before_ stayed away when he was near. His light kept the darkness—the darkness I could sense in my periphery, just waiting to drag me kicking and screaming back into it—at bay. To sit, to watch _Star Trek,_ to absorb that radiant light of his, to know that I was safe… yeah. That was good stuff, even if he needed a little help learning proper skincare and pant fit.

Too bad he wouldn't stop asking those _stupid_ questions.

Well. They weren't exactly stupid, but they were damned inconvenient if you ask me. He meant well by trying to help me figure out who I was and all that crap, blah blah blah, but he also didn't know when to back off and just let a girl watch some _Star_ _Trek_. He had a real white knight complex, this Kuwabara dude. Too bad for him I couldn't indulge that complex, because I didn't remember _shit_ , and that threw quite a wrench into his plans to rescue me from... well, whatever it was he thought he was saving me from.

And to be honest? I wasn't sure I wanted him to succeed. Succeed in rescuing me, I mean.

It's hard to root for someone to restore your memory and send you to heaven when you have no fucking clue what those missing memories entail.

Not that I hadn't tried my damndest to regain said memories myself, mind you. In private, out from under Kuwabara's nosey-ass scrutiny, I'd tried hard as hell to remember my life… but I just couldn't. I'd searched back as far as I could, thinking so hard I'd have given myself an aneurism if, y'know, I had a physical brain and stuff, but there was nothing in my memory but black.

Black, the color of despair.

Black, the shade of misery.

Black, the hue of desolation, stretching deep deep _deep_ down into nothing, spiraling into a well of terror and emptiness and loneliness—

I shuddered. I couldn't help it. Standing there, watching Lucy and Ricky argue on the TV screen, I wrapped my arms around myself (the one and only thing I could touch) and wrenched my mind away from the yawning chasm of my missing memories. I didn't want to go back there again. I didn't want to go back to that spiritual pit, find myself stranded at the bottom of its shadowy belly, lost and alone and comatose again, the darkness ringing all around me like that annoying phone from earlier, insistent and loud and inescapable and—

The lightbulbs overhead flickered. They sizzled. They dimmed and brightened and somewhere overhead, the wiring emitted a high-pitched whine of stress.

I couldn't do any deep-breathing to calm down (no lungs and whatnot) but I did the next best thing: I sat in front of the TV, clutched my knees to my chest, and tried to commit every last line of _I Love Lucy_ dialogue to memory. I'd seen the episode before; I knew some lines already. It was easy to follow along, distracted from the darkness by the greyscale images on the screen. I sat there, mouthing the words, until the lights stopped flickering and the memory of that immense void buried itself away under mountains of Lucy's babbled English.

No way would I break another lightbulb, I told myself.

No way would I create another mess for Kuwabara, I promised.

No way would I lose control and give in to despair, fuck up the apartment where Kuwabara (nice, kind, knightly, good-natured-but-annoying Kuwabara) let me stay, because if I shattered another bulb or three I'd just _die_ of embarrassment and—

Oh, wait. That's right.

I was already dead.

As Lucy shoved chocolates into her mouth and down the neck of her blouse, I pressed my forehead to my knees and sighed.

"Come home soon, Kuwabara," I muttered—but when the door remained shut, and I remained alone without his light to beat the darkness back, I knew I couldn't count on him to keep me above the waters of despair solo.

Kuwabara was nice to have around, but he was not going to save me. No. It wouldn't be fair to put that on him, and I wasn't the type of girl to rely on a guy to solve my problems, anyway. I could only count on myself to save me from the darkness—even if I had no idea what the heck "saving" myself might look like.

... or even if I wanted to be saved at all.

* * *

NOTES

 _Roza's POV, y'all. She's fun to write. And way more expressive now, as you can see._

 _Cohabiting is hard. I know the intro scene was just sort of funny/silly and straight out of a racy manga, but honestly? It's realistic for two people in their situation. They'd have to be very careful to set up boundaries at the start and of course there would be mishaps early on. Roza has forgotten how to interact with people, and when you live with someone for whom walls are merely a suggestion, it's good to be very clear with your expectations regarding personal space._

 _As promised last week, you'll get a chapter next Saturday, too._

 _Anyway. I hope the holidays are going well for everyone. Didn't hear from too many of you last week, which is OK; people get busy! I just hope you're all well and that you have a happy whatever-you-celebrate. Big thanks to those who reviewed! You rock my socks somethin' fierce: Arkeisios, Blaze1662001, DeusVenenare, Anime Pleasegood, o-dragon and Laina Inverse!_


	14. Ch 14: Haunting You in Parachute Pants

Warnings: Disturbing supernatural imagery; eye trauma.

* * *

The Ghost in You

Chapter 14:

"Haunting You in Parachute Pants"

* * *

Kuwabara's landlady answered the door on the third knock and was _absolutely delighted_ to see him.

It wasn't the first time he'd met his landlady—or, more accurately, the mother in law of the current landlord. She had been the landlady before her daughter's son took over; now she was retired and enjoying herself immensely, she was quick to assure him. She lived on the ground floor, near the information office, and as soon as she saw Kuwabara on her doorstep she took him by the arm and bustled him inside for a cup of tea—not that her warmth towards him was surprising. She liked Kuwabara. He'd helped her carry her groceries home a few days after he moved in and had never had a noise complaint. Plus, he was always polite (Shizuru had beaten it into him), so when he asked if she'd be willing to speak with him about the history of the apartment complex, she was all too happy to oblige. As soon as the tea was served, she sat down and started to chatter, reciting the history of her acquisition of the building with gusto.

As she talked, Kuwabara sipped his tea and politely listened. _Raptly_ listened, actually. Normally he'd be bored to tears listening to someone talk about building codes and deed restrictions and weathering the stock market collapse of the early 90s or whatever, most of it went over his head, but now he hung on his landlady's every word. The dry subject matter kept him from thinking about the moment he'd wrenched back his shower curtain to find Roza standing there in his tiny bathroom, big brown eyes all shiny like a deer's or something as she stared at him, and then when they got done screaming in surprise she'd smiled real big and it made her eyes sparkle _and then she made that comment about his abs, oh shit oh shit oh shit oh fuck—_

Kuwabara picked up his mug of tea and chugged—more to hide the red in his cheeks than out of thirst, though. Don't think about what happened, Kuwabara told himself with every scalding mouthful. Don't think about the pretty ghost girl almost seeing you naked. And she _was_ pretty, even if she was as dead as a doorknob. Even with that faint blue tint beneath her bronze skin, Roza (with her shiny hair and clear skin and bid, watery eyes and painted pout) was the kind of girl who made head turns.

Which meant she was the kind of pretty Kuwabara wouldn't have looked twice at in the real world.

Pretty or not, Roza wasn't the kind of girl Kuwabara paid attention to. She was the kind of girl who'd ignored him all through middle and high school, after all, and getting over his aversion to preps (or whatever) would probably take some time. She liked makeup and clothes and she wore a lot of glitter, AKA she wasn't his type _at all,_ but…

Pretty.

Roza was pretty, and she had almost seen him naked, and he had marched straight down to the landlady's office after the incident because if Roza kept looking at him with those big brown eyes of hers for even a second longer, Kuwabara was pretty sure his head would explode.

Oblivious to Kuwabara's mortified inner monologue, the landlady (whose name was Furuya-san, Kuwabara reminded himself) sighed and put a hand to her cheek. "Oh, dear. Just listen to me reminisce. I don't suppose you came here to hear and old lady ramble about the past. Did you have something specific in mind you wanted to hear about?"

"Uh, yeah!" He put his empty cup on the _kotatsu_ , conscious of how much larger he was than the cushion underneath him. "Y'see, it's random and stuff, but did a young lady by the name of Roza ever live here?"

"Roza?" Furuya-san repeated. "That's an unusual name. I'd remember it if I heard it, I should think. Why do you ask?"

"Well, you see, I lived nearby back when I was a kid, and I had a friend named Roza who lived in the area, too." This was a lie, and while Kuwabara would normally feel bad about lying to nice old ladies, this was a special case and he needed to make an exception to help a certain other nice dead lady _who had almost seen him naked oh shit oh shit oh fuck_ —don't think about that! Kuwabara coughed into his fist and added, "But I don't remember which building she lived in, and… I was just curious, is all." He shrugged and tried to smile. "Feeling a little nostalgic now that I'm back home."

"I see. Nostalgia is such a funny thing." Furuya's face softened with contrition. "But I'm sorry, dear. I don't remember anyone by that name living here."

"I see. Must have been another apartment complex, then." He tried to cover how awkward he felt, and how the hopeful bubble in his chest had burst, by making a joke. "They all look so much taller now that I'm grown up."

Furuya poured him another cup of tea, her smile kindly. "And into what a tall young man, at that!"

Kuwabara ducked his head and flushed; Furuya laughed, called him a sweet boy, and excused herself to the kitchen for a plate of snacks. Kuwabara tried to protest, but it was no use: Furuya was a grandmother's age and had the instinct to feed all nearby individuals younger than herself that is characteristic to grandmas everywhere. Kuwabara sat politely to wait while she bustled around in the kitchen—but soon Roza's big, limpid eyes entered his head again, and he distracted himself by studying the spider plants hanging by the window, the books on the many shelves against the walls, the crane pattern on the wallpaper he could see through a crack in the bedroom door, heck, even the pattern of the grain on the wooden _kotatsu's_ flat top was preferable to reliving that morning's embarrassment—

Kuwabara had to stifle a relieved sigh when Furuya-san returned. Steam from a plate of hot cookies fogged her glasses and made her short, permed hair frizz a little, but her wrinkled face appeared undeterred as she set the plate before him. Only after he ate three cookies did she finally move away with a satisfied smile, heading to one of the bookshelves near the record player sitting on its wooden stand.

"Now, I have some photo albums with pictures through the years, if you'd like to take a look. I always thought of the residents as extended family and took photos for the memories." She traced her finger over the spines of a few thick tomes bound in green cloth. "Let's see… what year might this have been?"

"The—the 80s." It was a broad guess based on Roza's clothing choices, but it was his only one.

The landlady nodded. "The 80s, eh? Late or early?"

"Uh…" He took a shot in the dark around a mouthful of cookie. "Late?"

"Oh?" The landlady frowned over her shoulder at him. "You might have the wrong building, dear. Depending on _how_ late, it's unlikely your friend lived in this building."

"Really? Why's that?"

"We shut down the building for a year or so after an earthquake to make extensive foundation repairs. That must have been oh… 1989? 1990?"

Kuwabara's heart stuttered. "And did anyone _die_ in that earthquake?"

The question was a mistake, of course, and Kuwabara clapped a hand over his mouth as soon as he blurted his query aloud—but it was too late. Furuya-san wheeled on him, mouth wide open in prim shock.

"Did anyone—?" Her mouth shut with a click of teeth; one finger rose to wag at him, incensed. "That is an inappropriate question, young man!"

"I'm sorry!" he said before she even finished scolding. He apologized again and again, bowing over the _kotatsu_ from his seat as his face turned crimson. "I'm sorry, I don't know why I just—"

Furuya-san wouldn't have it. "No one has _ever_ died in this building, nor during the foundation renovations, and I am appalled that you'd ask such a frightful thing!"

"I'm sorry, ma'am, I'm sorry—I'm a medical student and we're all a little. Um. Morbid?" He bowed so low his nose brushed his cookie plate. " _I am very sorry!_ "

Kuwabara held his penitent pose for many seconds, but Furuya-san said nothing. Eventually he chanced a look at her, face lifting in increments away from his dish. Furuya stared at him in silence. When their eyes met, she shook her head and sighed.

"It's all right." A look of grandma-ish longsuffering stole across her face, like one of her descendants had done something silly at a shrine on New Year's, but she couldn't stay mad forever. "You're polite, at least. That's something."

He apologized again, until she told him it was fine and offered him more cookies. But it was too awkward to stay for long, and he left soon after without looking through her albums.

There wasn't much point to wasting time on them, anyway, Kuwabara thought. No one named Roza had ever lived here. He'd have to go a bit further afield if he wanted to figure her out.

* * *

The flick, flick, flick of the slides echoed in the still room as he skimmed through ancient microfiche. He'd long since tied his handkerchief over his face to ward off the dust coating the library's dark basement, but it did little good. His eyes still watered and his nose still itched, and every so often he had to take a break to sneeze. His eyes ached, too, from staring into the small viewfinder of the microfiche reader, as did his back and his shoulders—but for all the effort he'd put in that day, perusing dozens of newspaper headlines throughout the 1980s, he had nothing to show for his efforts but the dire need for a hot bath and a none-too-gentle neck massage.

The landlady had been right, of course. He could find no evidence that anyone had ever died in her building. No articles about it, nothing on police records, no obituaries or death certificates… not that he had the time to look at all of them or a good idea of where, precisely, to even start looking. But the librarian had been helpful in that regard, at least.

"Here." She'd directed him to a certain collection of microfiche in a back corner of the basement after showing him how to operate the machinery. "Obituaries, organized by ZIP code. There's a law school not far from here and they asked us to compile this for case study work." She rolled her eyes. "But it's true crime junkies like you who use it most, I think. They always try to hunt down the violent ones."

Kuwabara just smiled and tried not to look nervous. Let her assume whatever she wanted about him. So long as he got what he was after, she could make all the assumptions she'd like.

Not that Kuwabara was actually getting what he was after, down there in that dusty basement. Her obituaries told him nothing whatsoever about anyone named Roza, and when he started skimming through other sets of microfiche that didn't involve dead people, the only thing he found about the apartment complex he lived in were a few break-ins throughout the years, and an article or two about the complex shutting down after the earthquake. A second article talked about the reluctant relocation of residents, and a third reported the complex's reopening.

No deaths in the building.

But at least he knew that whenever Roza lived in his apartment, it was before 1989… not that that really narrowed it down.

"So my landlady was telling the truth." His muttered observation echoed against the nearby shelves, globes, and other junk stacked high in the basement, odd reverberations making the hair on his neck rise. But then he frowned, and he said, "But hold on. That doesn't make a lick of sense. If Roza didn't really die in that apartment, why is she stuck there haunting it?"

It was certainly a good question, and one he didn't have a single clue how to answer—which was inconvenient, and it wouldn't get any less so by sitting down there in the dark and the dust. He whipped his kerchief off his face and blew his nose before putting on his coat and heading back upstairs. The librarian waved at him from behind the circulation desk as he passed, and with a smile she swiped off her reading glasses.

"Good timing; we're about to close." She jerked her head toward the stairs he'd come up from. "Find what you need?"

He shook his head. "But I'll come back and look again sometime."

"All right. We'll be here!"

She was a nice lady, that librarian, but Kuwabara wasn't sure if he'd actually end up coming back. His campus library had better options for his major, and he was not convinced more time with that old-ass microfiche would give him the answers he wanted.

But if not with the microfiche, then where?

Midway through the library lobby, he paused, echoes of his footsteps slowly fading in the cavernous marble foyer. He eyed the payphone vestibule in the corner, with its folding glass door and wooden slats, and thought about it. Counted the change in his pockets. Took a deep breath and walked over, shutting himself inside the coffin-sized space as he fed coins into the slot on the phone. His shoulders touched both sides of the glass enclosure, but he told himself he'd make this quick.

He'd make it quick not for his mild claustrophobia, but because if he didn't, and _she_ came home while he was still on the phone with—

"Hello?"

His throat tightened; his voice came out higher than he intended when he said, "Hey, sis. It's me."

"Oh." Breath rattled in the earpiece (Shizuru taking a drag on her cigarette, if he had to guess). "So I finally get a call back, huh?"

"You—? Oh, right." He rubbed the back of his neck, cheeks heating as he remembered the events of the morning. "The phone was ringing when I left earlier, wasn't it."

Shizuru paused a second. Then: "You OK?"

"Y-yeah, totally fine, haha!" Shizuru had a nose like a bloodhound for his embarrassment and he needed to change the subject, fast, or else she'd pry out the truth and he'd never live it down. "So, uh, what were you calling about?"

Another rattling breath. "Just to bug you about moving back home, is all," she said, casually.

"… really."

"Uh-huh."

"… are you sure?"

Shizuru paused again—and then she sighed. He could imagine her throwing up her hands, eyes rolling as she groused, "Eikichi wouldn't stop meowing. Damn cat misses you, bro. Figured you might know a trick to shut her up."

"Wait, _that's_ all you wanted?" He stared at the phone in his hand for a second, brow raised. "Why'd you call so many times over that?"

"Wouldn't have to call if you still lived here," Shizuru retorted. "You think better of moving out yet? Huh?"

This was, in short, the _exact freakin' reason_ Kuwabara had never called Shizuru for advice about Roza before then. Shizuru had been against him leaving home, not shy at all about her disapproval—disapproval expressed through incessant mockery and by calling his decision rash. (Which it had been, admittedly, but that wasn't the point!) Kuwabara pinched the bridge his nose between two fingers and sighed.

"No, I haven't thought better of it," he grumbled. "And anyway, that's not why I'm calling." A deep breath followed as he summoned up his courage. "Can you think of any reason a ghost would haunt a place where it didn't actually die?"

For a minute, Shizuru didn't say anything at all. She didn't even take a drag on her cigarette; Kuwabara really had stumped her, or at least it seemed that way to him. He waited in tense silence as the connection buzzed in his ear—and outside, through the high front windows of the library's airy lobby, rain began to fall. The hush of water on pavement filtered even into the phone booth, echoing inside the glass coffin like the breath of some whispering spirit.

"This is not the kind of conversation I was expecting to have with you, baby bro," Shizuru eventually muttered. "Color me surprised. But why do you ask?"

He'd thought of a story ahead of time. Kuwabara wasn't the best liar, so a script felt necessary. "Oh, well, there's this ghost of a hanged man at my school," he said, aiming for nonchalance. "I looked it up but no one died there, so I just wondered…"

Shizuru finally took a drag. "Maybe he died there before that spot was a school."

"Nah, that's not it. He's wearing stuff from the 80s."

"I don't know what's creepier: the fact that he's a ghost, or the possibility of him haunting you while wearing parachute pants."

At her dry remark, Kuwabara couldn't help but laugh. Roza wouldn't be caught dead wearing parachute pants—probably. Right? Actually, he wasn't sure. He had no idea if parachute pants were fashionable or not (though he suspected they weren't). He'd have to get Roza's opinion about parachute pants later, when he got home.

"Anyway. So what do you think?" Kuwabara said. "About him haunting a spot he didn't die?"

Something rustled. Shizuru shrugging, if he had to guess. "Maybe he lived there."

"It's the college, not the dorm."

"Maybe he moved there, then. After death. Ghosts don't always stick to the same spots."

"No, I don't think that's it. He's stuck. Can't even leave the—can't even leave the _classroom_."

He'd almost said 'apartment,' but at the last second he caught himself. But when Shizuru did not immediately reply, he wondered if she could sense that he wasn't being completely honest with her—or would she even care? Shizuru could usually tell when he was lying (when _anyone_ was lying; she was sharp like that) but sometimes she let minor deceptions slide. She could sense his good intentions just as well as his lies, but what if she—?

Shizuru surprised him, though, when she did not call him out. Instead she asked, "Do you remember the woodcut of a boat Mom used to have?"

He stared at the phone in his hand for a second or two before replying. "… no?"

"I was nine when she brought it home. You must've been… what, three?"

"Sounds right."

Shizuru paused again. Then, words slow and measured, she said: "Mom brought it home from a business trip to Yokohama, about a year before she got sick. Hung it in the hallway just outside the bathroom."

She stopped talking. Kuwabara waited. There came a clink, maybe an ashtray clattering against the kitchen counter, and the sound of a lighter ticking in her hand.

"Only had it about a month," Shizuru muttered. "Dad was away on business, and you know Mom never felt the things he does, or the things that we so. So she didn't know what was happening until I found out and told her."

Another click or two, and then Shizuru sighed. The ash tray clinked again. Kuwabara leaned back against the inside of the phone booth, shoulders wedged tight between two panes of glass—but he didn't mind the pinch. It wasn't often Shizuru talked about their mother, and Kuwabara barely remembered her.

"The woodcut wasn't an antique," Shizuru went on. "It was the kind of thing that's handmade, but made in a tourist trap—the thing they sell to tourists who can't tell the different between antique and a knockoff. The woodcut depicted this…wave. This massive, crashing wave with white foam and a whirlpool inside it, with blue ink layered into the carved lines. The wave covered the whole damn woodcut, top to bottom. And in the middle of it like a bathtub toy, just bobbing there on the water—"

Something clicked inside his head—a flash like a bulb coming on, only a shape instead of light. "A fishing boat," Kuwabara said. "A fishing boat with a red sail."

"So you do remember." Satisfaction softened her voice a little. "I figured you might. You were scared spitless of that thing, after all."

"I was?"

"You hated to look at it. Wouldn't go near it. And you were so little, you didn't know how to tell us what you were sensing." Her voice roughened again. "But one night I got up to get a drink of water, and there you were. Just sitting in the hallway, staring at it, eyes all glazed over. Sleepwalking."

"Yeah." He shifted uneasily against the glass. "I used to do that a lot, didn't I?"

"You did." A pause, small but distinct. "And that night, you didn't walk alone."

The breath caught in Kuwabara's throat. The air in the phone booth seemed to thin, and drawing breath (when Kuwabara remembered to breathe) left his chest feeling emptier than before.

"His clothes looked old," Shizuru said. "A straw hat and sandals, a short robe with a belt—and there was fishing line all tangled in his hair. But it wasn't the hook embedded in his eye that scared me. It was the water." Shizuru spoke with a steady rhythm, each new thought a chant drumming in time with Kuwabara's thudding heart. "It dripped off his fingers and pooled on the carpet. It pattered onto your hair and down your cheeks. You were shivering. You were _soaked_. And when he turned to look at me with that hook gleaming in the moonlight, face blue and bloated, eye running liquid down his face—"

An image of that face in the moonlight, that eye leaking fluid around a hook, flashed through Kuwabara's head as clearly as a memory—and Kuwabara couldn't say for sure if it was or wasn't one. He could only weakly croak a single word.

That word was, " _Stop_."

Shizuru obeyed. "Sorry." She wasted no more time on apology than that, forging onward in brusque tones. "We got rid of the woodcut when the sun rose. Burned it in the alley behind the house after I told Mom what I'd seen. She believed in that stuff, even if she couldn't see it herself. Dad had taught her a lot."

Shizuru's lighter clacked again. It must've caught fire this time, because soon she drew in a puff of cigarette. Kuwabara could nearly smell it, that far-off cigarette. He felt the smoke of her words and her chosen vice winding around him even at this distance, as ensnaring as the tale she spun.

"Mom prayed over the woodcut as it burned," Shizuru told him. "Sparks flew off into the night, and the smoke smelled like salt. And then it was gone—burned away to ash." A smile colored her voice, somehow. "You were happy, after that. And I never saw the fisherman again."

He couldn't help but think of the ghost of the drowned boy on the subway. He had been perpetually damp in death, just like that dead fisherman. "Do you think that ghost…?" Kuwabara ventured.

"Yeah." Shizuru knew what he was asking. "He drowned long before that woodcut was ever made. He drowned, and he affixed himself to the woodcut. Why, I can't say. But he did." He heard her shrug again. "Maybe he died out on the open sea when a big wave hit him. Can't affix yourself to the entire ocean. Maybe he clung to a ship when one passed near, and then when that sank, maybe he clung to something else. A long game of jumping from one thing that reminded him of death to the next, until he found that woodcut and scared you half to death." A pensive silence followed before she added, "Maybe this hanged man of yours did the same. He followed someone, or an object, and it led him to where he is now."

Kuwabara blurted, "What do you think happened to him?"

"What do you mean?"

"Oh. Um. The fisherman. When you burned the woodcut." He shifted against the glass, uncomfortable in his thoughts of the little drowned boy. "Where did the fisherman go, do ya think?"

"Beats me." Her voice held firm. "All we knew was that the woodcut couldn't stay."

They lapsed into silence. Kuwabara couldn't say for sure what Shizuru spent her silence thinking about. Maybe she thought of the dead fisherman. Maybe she thought of their mom. Maybe she thought of that night in the alley, burning the woodcut to save her baby bro. Maybe she thought of none of those things. Kuwabara, though, thought about what Genkai had told him when he went to her about Roza. Specifically he thought about what she said about exorcism, and what it meant for ghosts.

"Exorcism is forced banishment," she'd told him. "It makes a ghost leave wherever it's decided to stay, and whether they go to the next world or just next door is anyone's guess."

Maybe the fisherman was still out there, somewhere. Wandering around with a hook in its eye, tormenting little kids who got too close to crappy tourist-trap woodcuts of ships tossed like bath toys on the waves.

Kuwabara shivered. "OK," he said, both to Shizuru and to himself. "OK. Thanks, sis."

"Did I even help?"

"I'm… not sure." This was his honest opinion on the matter, and Shizuru did not question it. "But thank you just the same."

Shizuru did not protest when he said goodbye. She merely wished him luck before he headed off into the rain, muttering that he should come home and visit his damn cat the next time he got a chance. And although Kuwabara said he wanted to (because this, too, was the truth), he had no intention of making good on that desire. Not while _she_ was there, just down the hall, in the room beside the place where the woodcut had once hung.

But that was one truth Kuwabara would not tell his sister, because he suspected she already knew.

* * *

NOTES:

 _Loved exploring Kuwabara's early experiences with ghosts, not to mention Shizuru's snark. Also, longest chapter yet. Sweet!_

 _Next chapter will be out on Jan. 12. Chapter lengths will even out for a while, so we're now officially on biweekly updates._

 _Next time on_ The Ghost in You _: Kuwabara explains himself. Roza comes clean, and Kuwabara provides comfort._

 _Thanks for reading, y'all! Really appreciate those who took the time to review this past chapter. You're the absolute BEST and you made my day: manic pixie mary sue, Laina Inverse, o-dragon, read a rainbow, Blaze1662001, ralynsevenfoldd, LadyGhoul1, ForeverinWonderland, Shaelindra, Deamachi, Convoluted Compassion and GrimmaulDee!_


	15. Chapter 15: Changing Channels

Warnings: None

* * *

The Ghost in You

Chapter 15:

"Changing Channels"

* * *

She greeted him at the door with even more exuberance than usual, flying around Kuwabara in eager circles the minute he stepped over the threshold. "Kuwabara, Kuwabara, you're home!" Roza sang. She stopped flying as he took off his coat, touching down delicately upon the floor to eye him over with hands on her hips and one brow raised artfully high. "Wait a sec. Why are you all wet?"

"Hi, Roza." He shook the water from his hair and sneezed, blinking as more water ran down his clammy face. "And, um—it's raining?"

He pointed at the living room window, where indeed great gouts of rain fell in sheets against the glass. Roza did a double-take at the rain and crossed her arms, staring at the water as if it had offended her somehow. How she'd missed the rain, Kuwabara couldn't say. It was coming down hard enough to fill his sneakers, which squished around his feet as he toed them off in his apartment's low shoe-area. Thunder rolled, muted by the layers of apartment complex between Kuwabara's home and the stormy skies, as he peeled off his sodden socks.

"Huh," Roza said, still staring at the rain. "I must've been too busy to notice—but never mind that!" Her toes lifted off the ground; in an instant she flew behind Kuwabara and shooed him forward toward the living room. "Now hustle, dangit! You gotta see this!"

"Sheesh, sheesh, all right already." Kuwabara let Roza push him forward, careful to avoid touching her incorporeal icewater hands. "What're you so amped up about, anyway?"

"Wait'll you see, wait'll you see!" she chirped. "C'mere c'mere c'mere c'mere—"

Humoring her seemed like the best thing to do considering the circumstances; whatever she was on about, it would keep her from asking where he'd gone all day after the incident with the shower (his cheeks heated up again at the memory, but Roza was too preoccupied to notice). Roza's enthusiasm was also contagious; Kuwabara found himself grinning as she bade him in giddy tones to sit on the couch, where he set about drying his hair with his jacket as she knelt primly in front of the TV. It played an _I Love Lucy_ rerun, as it usually did this time of day, volume on low so as not to disturb the neighbors.

"I've been trying all day. I thought I was just, y'know—wishful thinking." Roza waved vaguely at the air as she settled into _seiza_ pose and combed her long brown ponytail over her shoulder. "But it's just like you said about the doors: I've been able to move them a few times, and I can shatter lightbulbs like a pro. And I saw that movie on the TV, _Poltergeist_ , so—"

She waved at the TV, then, expression conspiratorial. Like she expected Kuwabara to read her mind or something, or—oh. _Oh_. Was she really…?

"Roza." Kuwabara enunciated her name with care. "Have you been trying to…?"

Roza held up her finger and shushed him. "Don't spoil it! Just watch!"

And so Kuwabara watched. Roza took a deep breath (though Kuwabara wasn't sure what the rise and fall of her chest beneath its glittery t-shirt indicated, given she didn't actually have lungs, but he supposed that wasn't any of his business). Her large brown eyes, ringed in thick lashes, locked onto the television screen like guided missiles and held there, unblinking. Lucille Ball danced across the screen in a fruit headdress, but Roza didn't watch her. To Kuwabara it looked like Roza was looking _past_ the TV screen, or maybe was lost in a daydream and wasn't actually seeing anything before her. Kuwabara knew that look. He used to do wear it in class, but he'd broken himself of the habit back when he got serious about school, and Urameshi had sported that same expression up to the very day he stopped coming to school at all.

A high-pitched ringing, like feedback off some distant microphone, buzzed in Kuwabara's ears. He wasn't quite sure if he was imagining it or not. It danced around the edges of his hearing, almost too high to discern, but…

He dug a dinger in his ear and sniffled, shivering when a bead of water ran from his damp hair to down below the neck of his t-shirt. Still Roza stared at the TV—but just as Kuwabara started to ask what the heck she was trying to do, her eyes opened as wide as they could go, and she lifted one hand swiftly and decisively toward the television set.

As if cued by some supernatural maestro, thunder rolled. The image of Lucy in her fruit headdress flickered. Static filled the edges of the screen, and then another image (a daytime soap opera, Kuwabara thought) rippled across the picture, momentarily obscuring Lucy and her zany dance. Within half a second the image shredded at the corners and disappeared. Lucy emerged from within the interference, still dancing, unaware she'd been interrupted in the slightest.

Roza, meanwhile, crowed like a triumphant rooster and slapped her thigh. "There, there! Did you see that?" she said, pointing again and again at the TV. "Did you see it, Kuwabara? Did you?"

"Uh… static?" Kuwabara said, squinting. "Fuzz? Bad reception?"

"What?! No!" She pointed yet again at the TV, as if by pointing vigorously enough, she could change his mind. "I almost did it! I almost changed the channel!"

"You sure the antenna didn't just wiggle?" He couldn't help but think of the rain and the way the thunder had boomed just as the TV went wonky. "It's stormy out today."

"But I've gotten it to go fuzzy on command at _least_ six times!" Roza held up a finger as she declared, "The scientific method dictates repetition of results to confirm a theory, and I got repetition, baby, so there!" And she used that same finger to pull down the skin under one eye, phantasmal tongue jutting out in his direction with a hearty, "Nyeh!"

Despite her childish behavior, Kuwabara couldn't help but be impressed. "And here I thought you said you weren't a science person," he said, teasing her. "Just look at you go!"

"I learned about the scientific method from you, smartass." She spun on the floor to face him, putting her back to the TV as it switched to a commercial break. "Well. Aren't you proud of me?"

"Yeah, of course! You did great!" Best to encourage her; Roza's smile burned at a million watts, and Kuwabara didn't want to see it fade. She was pretty when she smiled, the expression chasing away some of the deathly blue pallor beneath her coppery skin—but as that thought entered his head, his cheeks flushed. Kuwabara draped his jacket over his head, scrubbing at his wet hair to hide his face. "But what made you want to try changing channels, anyhow?" he mumbled.

Roza didn't reply. Kuwabara dropped the jacket and found Roza unmoved, still sitting _seiza_ on the floor—but she'd turned her face toward the window. Her brows had knit together, mouth a thin pink line against her blue-gold skin, and on her lap her hands had closed tightly into fists.

Kuwabara shivered. Was it just him and his wet clothes, or had the air in the room grown a little colder? As if drawn by his unspoken question, Roza's eyes cut his way, but then they cut back to the windows and the rain pounding wetly against the glass.

"Boredom is… not good," she said. "Not good for me, that is, and I can only watch a marathon of one show for so long before I get bored and start thinking about…" Her hands clenched tighter. "Well, it doesn't matter. I just knew I couldn't stay bored so I had to find something productive to do, and this is what I decided to try." She smiled and gestured at the TV like it was the grand prize of a game show. "And it worked. I haven't been bored all day! Talk about a self-saving princess."

"A what?"

"Oh, nothing." Her grin widened. "Point is, I'm amazing, right?"

Kuwabara meant it when he said, "You are."

"I thought you might say that." Roza preened, flipping her ponytail with exaggerated panache. "Was waiting all day to hear it, and—hey, where have you been all day, anyway? You ran out earlier without telling me. After the—y'know." Cupping her hands around her mouth, she whispered, "The _incident_."

Kuwabara's cheeks began to burn. "I—I was running errands."

"Really? What kind? Shopping for clothes?" Roza's face lit up; she scooted toward him, smile eager and open. "Oh, oh! See any interesting outfits?"

"Uh. I went to the bank?" More lies; he scratched the back of his neck so he could duck his face and avoid eye contact. "No outfits there, really."

Casual though he tried to keep it, Roza saw right through him. "Really," she said, not bothering to phrase it like a question. "You went to the bank."

"Uh… yeah."

"You're lying to me."

Kuwabara's head jerked up. Roza spoke plainly, simply, and without accusation. She stated the truth like it was the weather—like it simply _was_. And Kuwabara, in the face of Roza's unadorned statement of fact, could only sputter. He held up his hands and tried to tell her he was telling the truth, but the words sounded hollow even to him as he said, "N-no, I'm—"

"You _are_. You're lying." Black flooded her eyes from pupil to lid; her hair crackled, turning the color of a clogged drain as it clung in slimy rivulets to her suddenly pale, blue-tinted skin. But rather than look angry, she only appeared hurt as she hunched, long and lean body folding in on itself like origami crushed in a fist. "You _lied_ to me."

Though her appearance was frightening, Kuwabara wasn't scared.

She wasn't intimidating. Not like this.

She was only pitiable, and at once Kuwabara felt his heart begin to break.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, Roza. I lied to you. You're right."

The truth did the trick. The blue shroud of death receded and the pale pallor of her skin deepened back to copper. Though her eyes stayed black, her hair turned to auburn once again; Kuwabara counted that as a victory, however small.

"Why?" she asked, voice like a pipe rattling in a wall. "Why did you lie?"

Kuwabara hesitated. Roza uncurled from her crushed position, head and all-black eyes tilted curiously—and morosely—up at him. Roza was nice and stuff, but she was delicate, and Kuwabara wasn't exactly sure how to proceed with telling her what he'd been up to. She wouldn't like it, that was for sure. So how could he—?

Roza pulled her knees to her chest and looped an arm around them. Her other hand traced a pattern on the floor, one single, slender, nail polished finger tracing the whorls in the wood grain. Back and forth, back and forth her finger went. Like a cat's tail twitching as it watched a mouse, patient and steady and slow.

A cat's tail.

Right. _Right_. He knew exactly how to talk to Roza, didn't he?

Kuwabara sat on the floor and scooted on his butt toward Roza, who sat up straight and stared at him in outright alarm. He crept as close as he could before going still, sitting cross-legged on the floor with shoulders stooped. He was getting on her level, not to mention making himself look smaller. He was a big guy, after all. Stray cats didn't usually like how big he was, and they always seemed to appreciate when Kuwabara took care not to loom. Maybe Roza was the same. Worth a shot, anyway, even if Shizuru would call him silly for thinking so.

"Listen," he said, grasping his ankles in his hands. "I'm not going to ask you too many questions about… your past. It's hard for you. I get that. But I want to help." When she didn't react, just stared at him through wide black eyes, he added: "You, I mean. I want to help _you_."

Her eyes narrowed, hooded beneath her thick bangs. "I didn't ask for your help."

"I know." He swallowed. "But—but don't you want to go to—?"

He pointed skyward, meaning obvious. Roza, though, just shook her head.

"I've never told you what I want," she said. "You just assumed."

Kuwabara gaped. She spoke the truth (Roza inevitably spoke the truth) but— "But who doesn't want to go to _heaven?_ " he blurted.

Roza glared and opened her mouth to reply—but then she paused. Shut her mouth. Looked up at the ceiling for a second before sighing and rubbing her temples, annoyed at the obviousness of his statement. "OK, granted, probably nobody once you consider the alternative," she grumbled with a nervous glance at the floor. "But still—I never asked for your help." She drew herself up and declared, "So whatever it was you did today, don't go doing it again. You've got too much else to do to be thinking about me."

"But, Roza—"

"Kuwabara, _no_." An emphatic shake of her head sent her ponytail flying. "Look, I get you're trying to take care of me, but I can take care of myself. And you need to focus on you, not me."

Oh. So _that_ was the issue. "It wasn't any trouble, Roza," he assured her. "Just a quick little thing, I promise."

But Roza only shook her head again. "That's not the point. Even if it was a quick little thing, that doesn't stop me from feeling guilty about you spending time on me—when I didn't even _ask for it_ , remember?" She pointed at the kitchen table, where Kuwabara's textbooks lay sprawled across a mountain of notes. "You have a test on Tuesday. You should've been here studying for _that_ and not—well. And not whatever it was you did today, on your day off." She leaned toward him, making unnerving eye contact with her fathomless eyes. "You should have been _studying!"_

And it was true. He really should've studied some that day, but being scolded by a dead girl pricked uncomfortably at his pride. "Hey, I didn't do that much today," he protested. "I just went to see the landlord."

Roza blinked. "The landlord?"

"Yeah. She's lived here for longer than I've been alive."

"But why did you…?"

"To see if she remembered someone like you," Kuwabara said. "Maybe knew someone with your name. That kind of thing."

Even if she didn't much like that he'd spent time on her, Roza seemed too curious of a person to stay mad at him for long. Not when he might have information for her, at least. "Oh," she said, eyes widening (which only revealed how truly black they had become). "And she said…?"

"She said no one died in this apartment, let alone the building, either. And the library backed that up." Realizing he'd outed himself as having done more than just visit the landlord, Kuwabara coughed into a fist. "I, uh… I looked at the obituaries and stuff. Just to confirm, and stuff."

Roza didn't seem to pick up on his inconsistencies, however. She put her hand to her chin and mirrored Kuwabara's posture, sitting cross-legged and leaning forward until their foreheads almost touched. "But if that's true, then why am I…?" She sat up, and suddenly the black was gone from her bright gaze, brown eyes glimmering as they met his own. "Are there rules for hauntings?"

"… uh. What?" Kuwabara said.

"Are there rules for hauntings?" Roza waved vaguely in the direction of heaven. "Like, is there a book about being dead or anything?"

"A book?" Kuwabara said, dumbfounded. "Why the heck would there be a book about being dead?"

"Hey, don't make fun of me! There was a handbook for dead people in _Beetlejuice_!"

"Again with these movie references!"

"Oh, whatever. I wanted to work in film. Movies are sort of my jam." She tossed her hair, apparently not realizing that she'd just said something about her past, but she kept talking before Kuwabara could point this out; he filed that little factoid about Roza away for safekeeping. Roza said, "But anyway, I have questions, dammit! Do you have to die in a place to be stuck there, or what? What if you die really far away from home? Are you stuck far away forever?"

"I don't know," Kuwabara confessed—but then the image of the dead fisherman flashed unbidden through his head. Kuwabara shivered. "I think it's different for every ghost, but… it's possible you could have travelled here somehow. It's happened."

Roza considered this for a moment. Soon her shoulders sagged, and she sighed. "Man. If only this were _Beetlejuice_ ," she lamented.

Kuwabara nodded. "Sure would make this easier."

"I'll say!"

"Yup. But, anyway." He crossed his arms over his chest, head hanging low as he worried his lips with his teeth. "It stinks, but—I honestly don't know what to do next. Checking out the building was a bust. And since I don't know how you di—"

He cut himself off, unable to keep from shooting Roza a look of hangdog guilt. She knew what he was getting at even if he didn't complete the word, though. Her head hung, too, ponytail falling silken over her slumped shoulder.

"How I died?" she said in a low voice. "That's what you were going to say, wasn't it."

Kuwabara winced. "Yeah."

"If you knew how I… _you know_." She took a deep breath (if that's what it even was) of unclear purpose. "You could search for me that way. You could look up women my age who died in certain ways, and…"

"That's right," Kuwabara said, as gently as he could.

Roza didn't move for a moment, and her lips barely fluttered when she said, "Well. That's too bad, I guess." She somehow didn't look upset when she raised her head and met his eyes, her glossed mouth curling into a wry smile. "I don't remember dying. I think back, but… it's all blank. Before that day I woke up and you were watching Star Trek, there's just nothing. I don't know how I'd even go about finding that stuff out." She shrugged, smile turning smug. "So you're out of luck, sorry to say. Too bad, so sad."

"Maybe, but maybe not. Most ghosts show how they died," Kuwabara said. "There's…" He wondered how to put it delicately, then decided on the word: "Evidence. There's evidence."

Roza looked alarmed. "Like a knife stuck in their back? I thought that was just in the movies!"

"Just because it's in a movie doesn't mean it's wrong." Genkai would be proud to hear him quote her, but he didn't have time to gloat. Grinning, he said, "And Roza—weren't you just talking about _Beetlejuice?_ "

Her nose thrust high into the air. "Oh, shut up!"

He just laughed, and when he was through, he was pleased to see a hectic blue flush invade her cheeks. "Anyway," he said as she tried not to look embarrassed. "Drowned spirits are usually all wet. People who've been hanged wear rope around their necks. Some spirits have visible wounds. But I don't see anything like that on you."

Roza wrapped her arms around herself. "Me neither," she said in a voice no louder than a whisper.

She didn't say anything else. She just sat there holding herself and staring at the floor, as disturbed looking as a person who just watched a horror movie by accident. Kuwabara's sympathy sensors went a little nuts at the expression on her pretty face. He'd only just promised her that he wouldn't ask too many questions about her past, and here he was breaking it so soon after vowing to try and be a better friend. And sure, his efforts were coming from the right place, but that didn't make the pain radiating off of her in waves any less agonizing. He felt the pain in her as if experiencing it himself. It shivered up his spine and lodged in the base of his skull right where spine became brain, as undeniable as a migraine and as intense as one, too.

He found himself leaning toward her, reaching for her hand, but at the last second he remembered himself. "Hey. It's all right," he settled on murmuring instead. "Not sure what I'll do next, but Roza—I promise to keep trying. I promise."

For a moment, the pain in her face morphed into gratitude—but then like shells on a seashore, grim determination washed that gratitude away. Her eyes hardened, though this time they did not turn black. "Look, Kuwabara," she said in clipped, brusque tones. "I appreciate your efforts. But like I said—don't go to any trouble on my account. I can take care of myself."

"Sure, you can," he said, humoring her. "But you can't talk to our landlady or go to the library, so…"

"So _nothing_." Roza didn't want to be humored, judging by the granite cast to her jaw. "Thanks for telling me all that stuff you found out, but don't go looking again."

Kuwabara floundered. It really was no trouble for him to help her, his homework load notwithstanding, and he wasn't sure what else her problem with accepting his help could be. "Why not, though?" he said, unable to keep from asking. "Just—just tell me why. Please?"

It became Roza's turn to flounder. "Because—because I don't want you to."

"But, Roza. Why?"

She looked away. "Because."

"That's _not_ a reason."

"Sure it is. And even if it wasn't, I don't need a reason." She crossed her arms, nose thrusting skyward. "I don't have to explain myself."

"No," Kuwabara grudgingly agreed, because he had to admit she had a point, "but it'd be helpful if you—"

Roza's face spasmed and she blurted, "You're so _nice!_ "

Kuwabara stopped talking. Roza huffed and ran her fingers through her bangs, staring at the floor between them as bright blue suffused her cheeks. A ghost's version of a blush, probably. Kuwabara wasn't sure, and he was too busy processing what she'd said to think about it for long. She'd complimented him in the tone most people reserve for making serious or even insulting accusations (so basically the tone Shizuru used when he slacked off on studying). And that didn't make sense, because Roza had said something… well, _nice,_ to call a spade a spade. And that wasn't anything to yell or look so embarrassed about.

"Uh." Kuwabara had no idea what to say, so he just opted for an uncertain, "Thank you? I guess?"

The blue in Roza's cheeks looked like sky made solid. "You're nice," she mumbled against her knee. Her eyes flashed amber when she glared at him. "And _that's_ why I don't want your help."

"… that doesn't make any sense."

Roza shrugged. "Sure it does."

"No, it doesn't."

" _Yes_ , it _does_. You're _nice_." She hesitated. "What if I wasn't?"

Kuwabara's head tilted to one side. "Huh?"

Roza sighed, tangling a hand in her bangs again. "What if I wasn't a nice person like you?" she muttered. Words crept from her mouth as if pried into being by a crowbar. Unable to look at him, eyes locked on the floor, hands woven into her hair so tight it looked like she was trying to tear away her scalp, Roza asked him, "What if I wasn't a good person? What if I was a bad one? What if I finish my business and move on and I don't go to heaven? What if I go—" Her voice broke like glass on stone. "What if I go somewhere _else?_ "

She didn't need to elaborate. Kuwabara knew where she implied, and it was too horrible a possibility to speak aloud—but he was glad, in a dark way, that she'd said it. So _that_ was why she didn't want help. So _that_ was why she didn't want to recover her identity. She feared what he might find if he went digging, and she feared the consequences if what he found did not fall in her favor.

And he had had no idea she felt that way. The possibility that she might go… um, to the _opposite of heaven_ simply had not occurred to Kuwabara.

"You won't." The words, as certain as Roza's had been hesitant, slipped out of their own accord—but Kuwabara meant them. He caught her eye and looked at her without flinching, and he said, "You won't, Roza. You won't go there."

Her voice cracked further; her lip trembled, hands shaking just as hard as they clasped around her legs. "But what if I do?" she asked.

Kuwabara shook his head. "You won't."

"You can't promise me that." Roza sounded like a funeral bell as she said, "You can promise a lot, but not that."

"Roza…"

She blinked rapidly, as if clearing ghostly tears from her incorporeal eyes. "I know you want to help me. And I'm grateful you have that desire," she said, forcing a trembling smile—for his benefit, Kuwabara was sure. "But… but Kuwabara, you're an optimist, and I'm guessing it never occurred to you that there's a chance you could send me to hell for all the good you're trying to do me."

She was right, of course. It hadn't occurred to him at all—but even once she voiced the possibility, he still didn't think it would come to pass. "There's no way you'd…" He paused. Swallowed. Regrouped. "There's _just no way_ , Roza. You're not a bad person."

Roza harrumphed and rolled her eyes, sass leaking through her sadness. "Says the guy who knows _absolutely nothing about me_ whatsoever," she quipped.

Her sarcasm made him laugh in spite of himself. "OK. Maybe I don't know anything about your past," Kuwabara admitted. "But I know that right now, you're a good person."

Roza shot him a Look. Kuwabara flushed.

"Um. A good ghost, I mean," he amended (to which Roza gave an approving nod). "There's no way you'd go to hell."

Her sadness flooded back in. "You can't know that."

"I _can_ , though." Kuwabara grinned, smiling for her benefit as much as she'd smiled for his, and jerked a thumb at his broad chest. "You're a pessimist, and I hate to inform you that I'm both an optimist _and_ a good judge of character. And your character is pretty great. Heaven-worthy, for sure." But Roza looked unconvinced, so he scooted even closer to her and tried to seem earnest. Lord knew that's exactly how he felt when he told her, "Look, Roza. Even when you were all covered in darkness and at your worst, you were kind to me. You helped me when I was in trouble."

Roza frowned. "I did?"

He nodded, hard. "Yeah. You did. And if you're the kind of person who'll put herself in danger to help someone even when you're at your most vulnerable, you can't be a bad person." Another of his grins, encouraging and sincere. "You just _can't be_."

Finally Roza seemed to believe him. Her legs uncurled, folding beneath her hips as she leaned forward and braced her weight on her hands. "You really think that?" she said, leaning close to search his face. "You really, really think that?"

"I _know_ that." They were almost forehead to forehead again, and normally Kuwabara would turn into a bumbling wreck if he got so close to a pretty girl, but somehow his nerves held as steady as steel. "I _know_ you're good, Roza. So please just let me help you. If we find out something bad, well… we can still find out who you are and not send you to the afterlife, right?"

His logic worked. "I guess," she said, voice gaining strength. "Yeah. I guess that'd be OK. Right?"

"I know it would." For the second time that night, he felt the urge to reach for her hand, try to comfort her with a gentle squeeze, but he knew it would do her no good. Instead he just smiled and said, "You said it yourself, that you'd like to know who you are. So let's find out, and then we can go from there. Together."

"Together," she repeated. She searched his face again. "Can you promise me just one thing?"

"Anything."

"Just… don't hurry." Her smile held steadier than before, eyes luminous with an emotion Kuwabara couldn't place. "Don't feel like you have to rush to find out who I was." She pulled away so she could gesture at the kitchen table, the couch, the door to his bedroom. "This place isn't so bad. At least it's safe." For a moment she hesitated—but then she smiled, a big, true smile, the kind she wore when she was at her most vivacious best. "And besides," she said, bouncing to her feet with a giggle and a wink. "I have company now, so I'm not lonely anymore."

His instinct was to laugh and smile back, but he didn't. "I can't stay here forever, though." He stood, too, careful to watch her expression—but she didn't look bothered, smile as steady as a sunbeam. "Eventually I'll have to move. These are student apartments, and I won't always be a student."

"That's true. But that's not for a while yet." She turned on her heel, spinning in place like a dancer. "For now, I don't mind just biding my time here…" She stopped spinning long enough to ask, "So long as you don't mind that I have to stay with you, of course."

He smiled on reflex. "I don't mind."

"Good!" Roza said, beaming, and she spun once more before sitting _seiza_ delicately before the television set. "Now let me see if I can make the channel change. Practice makes perfect, after all!"

Kuwabara dutifully took up space on the couch again, watching in silence as Roza tried to somehow work her ghostly magic the television set. He felt good about comforting her, and even better about knowing more about her fears and mental state—but even as she happily turned Lucille Ball's image to fuzz and back again, he had to wonder if keeping her here, in his apartment, for any longer than necessary, was healthy for her.

And if it wasn't? He had to wonder what, if anything, he could possibly do to help.

* * *

NOTES

 _I'll be posting a small follow-up chapter to this one next weekend (the 19_ _th_ _), then posting a larger, regularly scheduled chapter on the 26_ _th_ _. Stay tuned._

 _Super appreciated everyone who commented on the previous chapter. You're the best: Deamachi, manic pixie mary sue, read a rainbow, Blaze1662001, Tequilamockinbur, GrimmaulDee, Ink Outside the Lines, SterlingBee, Laina Inverse!_


	16. Chapter 16: Reflection

Warnings: Mentions of suicide and violence.

* * *

The Ghost in You

Chapter 16:

"Reflection"

* * *

I waited for Kuwabara to go to sleep, and then I got to work.

To the tune of rain on the window and the music of Kuwabara's gentle snores, I stole out of my closet and into the living room. I stood near the windows, over by the easy chair and the floorboard with the knot in it—the knot that looked like an eye, which watched as I lifted an arm and held it out beneath the light of the moon (or the streetlamp outside; whatever).

In the bedroom, Kuwabara's snores stuttered.

I held my breath.

Moment bled painfully into moment.

Then his snores continued unabated, in harmony with the pouring rain.

He only tended to snore when he was troubled. I could only hope that what troubled him tonight didn't have much to do with me. I already felt guilty; more would make me combust or something, probably.

But anyway. When his snores fell back into rhythm, I held out my arm again.

(Side note: It's odd, holding your breath as a ghost. You _can_ do it, but your head doesn't get light and it doesn't hurt to hold your breath for even an hour at a time. Trust me, I experimented. I think breathing is a force of habit for a ghost and not a necessity the way it is to the living. Making your chest rise and fall is a comfort, a holdover from a life you no longer have. But I digress.)

As I pushed back the long sleeve of my raglan top, I held my ghostly not-breath again. My skin looked paler than it really was in the shaft of moon-and-or-streetlamp-light streaming through the window. It looked like milk spilled across flesh, unblemished and whole. My other arm looked the same. No marks, no cuts, no bruises. Rain on glass cast a million undulating shadows across the furniture, the floor, my spectral form (how was it _doing_ that?), but even so, I could tell my arms had suffered no trauma.

Which meant I could rule out slitting my own wrists as my cause of death, I guess. Not to mention a potential heroin overdose. No track marks, see? And that meant I hadn't been some overtaxed student who killed herself during exam week, then, or a junkie who died in an alleyway after an injection of bad drugs. Good to know. But there were still other possibilities to rule out, so I stripped out of my shoes and legwarmers and inspected my legs.

They looked the same as my arms.

My limbs were slender and whole, night-paled with that ghastly blue undertone that _totally_ threw off my tan. Ugh. But my clear-skinned ankles and untouched thighs suggested I hadn't been drowned in a river with weights tied around my legs like a disgraced Yakuza underling, so that was something, at least.

Another side note: Removing clothes as a ghost is as odd as holding a breath. But somehow I still stripped out of my jacket, and my shirt, and the lace bralette beneath. In nothing but my underwear and shorts, I spun in place, holding my arms around myself for modesty, but I saw nothing on my back, or chest, or stomach, or breasts that indicated trauma.

I hadn't been stabbed in a mugging-gone-wrong, then.

I hadn't been fed through a meat grinder.

I wasn't dripping with water like a drowned person.

I touched all over my head, but I couldn't find any wounds that signaled a fatal blow to the skull.

And I was pretty sure I'd be, like, foaming at the mouth or something if I'd overdosed on pills, which ruled that out, too.

Although I couldn't feel temperature, I shivered. The rain made me look like an ink-painted leopard in a deluge, dotted in hollow black spots dribbling wetly down my body. With steady fingers I unknotted the scarf around my neck and held it to my bare chest. I stepped close to the window, toes nearly against the wall, peering into the glass as if trying to read words in the fall of the steady rain.

Nothing stared back at me in the window but water, streetlight beyond haloed in fine, glowing mist.

I had no reflection to inspect.

Kuwabara had told me, once, that only the strongest of ghosts can have reflections.

But I guess even me, the girl who could eat other ghosts for breakfast (or so Kuwabara told me), wasn't strong enough to see herself reflected in plain glass.

That didn't mean I couldn't rule out another kind of death, however. Touch ginger, I felt all over my neck with my hands. My spine held straight and tall, unbroken. I hadn't hung myself, then, or twisted my neck falling down a flight of stairs.

But if not that, then what?

What had killed me but left no mark?

For a long time I just stood there. The scarf trailed out of my hands and onto the floor, bright yellow fabric dyed grey by the backlit rain. Somehow my clothes, shed like a caterpillar's chrysalis, lay intact and crumpled on the floor. Were my clothes a part of my ghostly self, then, tangible even when separated from me? Or did I simply wish to wear them again, and thus they remained?

Were they the clothes I had died in?

I inspected my clothing piece by piece. My shoes had soles well-worn, but clean and cared for. My top seemed new, sequins bright and tightly stitched in place. My jacket, silk and embroidered and beautiful, looked expensive. My scarf was of high quality. Hermes, I guessed. Another expensive item.

None of my clothes were dirty, or torn, or bloodstained.

My clothes held no clues about my demise, either.

Shivering again, I dressed myself. I put my shoes and socks back on, donned my bralette and sequined top. I slipped into my jacket and knotted my scarf in place, taking comfort in the way my clothes enveloped me in soft familiarity.

But they enveloped me in uncertainty, too. Uncertainty too unbearable to behold for long.

Moving as quietly as the ghost I was, I slipped back into my closet, unseen.

I slept.

Sleep—that inky blackness from which I could choose to return, eventually, once I got to feeling better—seemed far preferable to wakefulness, not to mention the unbearable, unrelenting uncertainty of consciousness.

* * *

NOTES

 _I intended to post this last weekend, but a migraine got in the way, so I decided to just post it today instead. Sorry it's short. I missed many of_ _you last week but I know Kuwabara stories aren't for everyone and that's 100% OK! I hope those reading see enjoying the mystery of Roza. This is a quiet sort of story and I'm really enjoying the opportunity to settle into the atmosphere of this setting. The big stakes of LC can get a bit stressful, ha ha. XD_

 _Next week, Kuwabara is visited by an old friend, and I'm really excited for their chat. Stay tuned for the new chapter, which will be posted Feb. 9. And many, many thanks to those who reviewed chapter 15, because you're angels: Laina Inverse, Deamachi, Blaze1662001, Ink Outside the Lines, GrimmaulDee, Iron DBZ!_


	17. Chapter 17: Visitation Rights

Warnings: None

NOTE: This story is NOT set in the same universe as "Lucky Child." Just FYI.

* * *

The Ghost in You

Chapter 17:

"Visitation Rights"

* * *

When a knock sounded three times upon his door, Kuwabara put down his pen and groaned. He was in the middle of studying, and he didn't have time for a kid selling wrapping paper or that Megumi chick inviting him places when he needed to focus on the finer points of cell division. He had to study, goshdarnit! Kids selling candy bars and nosey neighbors could take a hike.

Still, when the knock sounded again, Kuwabara stood up and trudged over to the door, resigned to interruption because the knock was particularly insistent and he got the sense the person knocking wasn't going to go away—but when he saw who stood on the other side of the door, his annoyance quickly gave way to an enormous grin.

"Keiko?" he said, throwing the door wide. "What the heck are you doing here?"

Yukimura Keiko's smile was as bright as it was pretty. "Ta-dah!" she said, thrusting a big Tupperware of cookies at him. "Housewarming present."

"Hey, thanks Keiko! These look great!" But then again, everything she baked tended to look good. "Chocolate chip?"

"Of course." She made a show of leaning around him, peering into his small apartment with a smile. "Now are you going to let me in or aren't you?"

And so, he let her in. Of _course_ he let her in. This was Keiko, after all—the girl who'd commiserated with him after Yusuke's teenage death and who'd helped him raise his grades enough to get into a good high school (against all odds and the expectations of his middle school teachers; Keiko was a miracle worker). And she'd even helped him study in high school, too, riding the train for an hour to reach him and make sure he got into a good college. It had been Keiko and Kuwabara against the world while Yusuke was away in Demon Realm, and when Kuwabara moved to Tokyo, Keiko was one of the people he missed getting the occasional lunch with most.

But she was here now, so there was no reason to dwell on how crappy it had felt to lose his number one study buddy after moving to Tokyo. As Keiko took off her shoes and wandered into his apartment, inspecting his furniture and the textbooks spread across the kitchen table, he put the cookies she'd brought on a plate and started to make some tea in the kitchen. Time to be a good host; Keiko would like that, he was sure.

"Who's the girl?"

He flinched at the whispered query, but it was only Roza. She'd phased halfway through the wall separating the living room and the kitchen, her head and shoulders jutting from the plaster like she'd been stuffed and mounted as a hunting trophy. Her smile glimmered with expectation, curious and bold.

"A lady-friend, mayhap?" Roza said. Her eyes twinkled as she ducked through the wall into the living room and then came halfway back into the kitchen. "And she's a cutie! Kuwabara, you sly dog!"

"Roza, shut it," he hissed between his teeth. "She can't see you! It looks like I'm talking to myself!"

Keiko's head poked through the kitchen doorway, one eyebrow cocked. "Did you say something?"

"N-no! Nothing!" Kuwabara shot Roza a pointed look. "Just one sec!"

And Roza understood his unspoken request, it seemed, because she pretended to lock her lips and throw away the key.

Roza drifted through the air as Kuwabara cleared the table and put out the cookies, settling at last on the windowsill to watch the passersby below. Keiko wandered through the living room until she, too, stood near the window, looking down at the street at Roza's invisible side. Keiko's hair had gotten longer since Kuwabara had last seen her. She'd grown out her bangs in favor a long, sleek style that suited the shape of her face—or so he guessed, based on stuff Shizuru might have said about the hairstyle. Keiko was stylish as always, too, in a buttoned-up pea coat and tall leather boots with a small heel. Roza looked her over and gave her an approving nod eventually, shooting a thumbs-up at Kuwabara. He just rolled his eyes, and soon he called Keiko over to the table to sit.

She did so, and once she got settled, she gave a nod to his apartment at large. "A little bare, but then again, it _is_ a bachelor pad," she said, voice light with teasing. "We'll have to get you some throw pillows, maybe a rug. And a frame for the posters, for sure."

Roza looked over from her spot on the windowsill. "Ooh, I like her taste!" She pointed one painted fingernail at Keiko. "Keep this one. She's cool."

"If you say so," Kuwabara said, responding to Keiko and Roza at the same time. "Keiko, I made tea, but do you want anything else to drink? Or to eat?"

Keiko giggled. "I'm fine. And you don't need to be worrying over me. I came here to check on you, after all."

He blinked a few times. "You did?"

"Of course." She rapped the table with her knuckles, smile wide. "Tell me what it's like to live in Tokyo, mister big shot med student!"

And so he did. Keiko listened with rapt attention as he told her about the city's busy atmosphere, describing how tightly packed the streets were and how convenient the place was once you got used to some of the noises that came at night. He never had to walk far to find something he needed, and shops were open at wild hours when he took a midnight study break. Keiko sighed and leaned her cheek on her hand when he told her about the shops he'd passed that she might like. She'd toyed with the idea of moving to Tokyo, back when they were in high school and thinking about their looming college careers, but her parents needed help with the restaurant and she stayed in Sarayashiki. That's why she ate up the details about Tokyo life so eagerly—but when she gasped, thrilled, when Kuwabara said his apartment complex was installing laundry machines in the basement, he paused.

Kuwabara's sixth sense manifested mostly when he was around ghosts or other supernatural phenomenon.

Just then, though, his Tickle Feeing began to buzz at the back of his skull—and it intensified when his eyes met Keiko's excited ones, trained so intently on his own.

"So." He toyed with his mug of tea. "Keiko?"

"Hmm?" she said, all smiles.

It took him a minute to find his nerve. "Why are you here?" he asked. "Why _exactly_ , I mean."

Her smile grew. "To visit a friend in his new apartment, of course."

But his Tickle Feeling only got worse. "Keiko," he said with a scowl. "I'm not dumb."

Keiko opened her mouth to speak.

She closed it again just as quickly.

For a minute they sat there in silence. Kuwabara munched on a cookie (delicious, just as he thought it would be) while Keiko stirred her tea, gazing into its depths like she wanted to read what to say next in the swirl of the liquid itself. "No," she murmured. "No, you're not." But try though she might, she didn't say more than that. She just opened her mouth. Shut it. Swirled her tea, shooting furtive glances at Kuwabara all the while.

And since Kuwabara wasn't stupid, it didn't take him long to figure out why Keiko—eloquent, well-spoken, class-rep Keiko—couldn't find it in herself to tell him the honest truth.

Kuwabara took a deep breath of his own.

Kuwabara said: " _She_ sent you, didn't she."

It wasn't a question, and at the sound of it, Keiko ducked her head and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. That was all the confirmation Kuwabara needed, really. His stomach plummeted into his toes, the drop sickening and cold, but before he could speak his conclusion aloud, movement caught his eye.

Over in her seat on the windowsill, Roza's head had swiveled toward him. She stared across the room in silence, studying the back of Keiko's head through narrow eyes. When she caught Kuwabara watching, she lifted a brow and mouthed the word, "She?"

Roza had no idea who Kuwabara meant, but Keiko had no such problem; there was only one _she_ whose name deserved italics, after all. Keiko lifted her eyes to Kuwabara's without flinching, even if her thumbs did continue to twiddle against the side of her tea mug.

"Not exactly," Keiko admitted, each word chosen with care. "I'll admit she asked me how you were, and that got me thinking about how we needed to catch up—" Her face adopted a firm expression, sincere and solid. "But she didn't _send me,_ specifically."

"OK." Kuwabara looked down at the tabletop. "I just know the two of you have gotten close, so…"

"I don't work for Yukina," Keiko said (and behind her, Roza mouthed 'Yukina?'). "She and I are friends, yes, but I've known you longer."

Kuwabara's stomach lifted out of his feet a bit. "Still…"

"I'll be honest." Keiko set aside her mug, hands clasping on the table as she met his eyes head on. "I care about Yukina. She and I are friends. I won't hide that from you, but I want to be clear: Even if we're friends, I'm not her spy. I won't report anything we talk about to her." A smile curled the side of her mouth. "And no matter how things change the two of you, I will fiercely maintain my visitation rights to the Kuwabara Kazuma bachelor pad."

It was such a "Keiko" response—the firm tone, the careful wording, the little joke at the end to let him know that no matter how neutral she remained, she was still the same old Keiko. Nothing in their friendship had changed a lick, even after—

After—

Kuwabara swallowed. "Good to know." His stomach had resettled in his abdomen, and he was able to finally smile. "Thanks, Keiko."

"You're welcome." She grinned. "Now when are you coming back to Sarayashiki for a visit? Yusuke misses you like crazy."

"Whoa—he _said that?"_

"Oh, of course not!" Keiko waved a hand in front of herself like she warded off a bad smell, laughing all the while. "Yusuke wouldn't know how to express his emotions if someone tattooed instructions on his forehead! But I can tell he wishes you lived closer." Her smile was just the littlest bit sad, then. "He keeps complaining that he doesn't have a sparring partner."

"Heh." Kuwabara smiled, too. "I'll have to come by for a drink and a punch to the face sometime."

"I'll hold you to it." A beat. "The first part, at least. We're trying to break Yusuke's punch first, questions later habits."

Kuwabara guffawed. "Good luck with that!"

"He really is the incorrigible sort," Keiko grumbled—but her eyes soon softened, and she raised her tea to her lips. "But that's why I love the jerk, I guess."

Kuwabara watched her take a drink in silence. When she put her cup down again, he said, "You're lucky, Keiko."

"Eh?"

"You and Yusuke. You're lucky to have found each other. You—" Words failed; he rubbed the back of his neck, eyes averted, cheeks hot. "Um."

"Kuwabara," Keiko said, soft as a feather on his skin, and she started to say something else.

Kuwabara didn't let her finish. "I'm rooting for you, is all," he blurted. "So, uh—" He gulped, lamely finishing with a small and quiet, "Yeah."

But Keiko didn't feel as awkward as he did, judging by the look on her face. She reached across the table and draped her hand over Kuwabara's, catching his eye as he glanced up in surprise. Keiko seemed to glow a little, affection and warmth lighting her expression from the inside out… and Kuwabara thought she'd never looked prettier, really, and it was no wonder Yusuke loved her the way he did.

"Thanks." Keiko squeezed his fingers, and he squeezed back on reflex. "I'm rooting for you, too."

They talked a while longer after that. Not about anything specific; not about _her_ , though the few times they skirted close to the subject, Kuwabara felt Roza's eyes on him, assessing and curious. He extended his talk with Keiko for as long as he was able, relishing the chance to catch up and the delay of Roza's inevitable interrogation, but soon Keiko had to leave. He walked her out to the curb and then to the train station, and when he came back, he took a deep breath before opening his apartment door.

As expected, Roza waited for him just inside the door.

He didn't look at her as he came in. He walked over the threshold and sat at the kitchen table, slouching over his homework without a word. Roza settled into Keiko's empty chair across from him, her phantasmal form conforming to the shape of the chair as she rested her hands neatly atop the table. For a minute neither of them spoke. Roza just stared at Kuwabara, and Kuwabara stared diligently at his homework, hoping Roza wouldn't ask him about—

"So…" Roza folded her hands together, pink polish on her nails catching the light and sparkling. "Yukina?"

Kuwabara's heart thumped. He hunched over his homework a little further. "Yeah," he muttered.

"You wanna talk about it?" Roza asked.

"Not really."

He held his breath, watching her from beneath his lowered brow—but Roza didn't press for information. She gave a little nod and slid out of her chair, knees curling up toward her chest so she could wrap her arms around them as she floated in place.

"OK." She nodded again, smiling a smile edged with the barest notes of sympathy. "But if you change your mind, I'm all ears."

Kuwabara's lip jutted out. "Well, I won't change my mind."

"And that's fine," Roza said.

He lifted his head, glaring at her. "It's none of your business anyway."

"You're right." She nodded gravely in agreement. "It's not."

"So I'm not saying anything."

"It's your prerogative," she chirped, nodding yet again, "and I support your right to privacy."

Kuwabara stared at her.

Roza inspected her nails, ignoring him. Soon she began to drift toward the living room. Her long ponytail fell over her chest in a waterfall of auburn; she dragged her fingers through it, humming to herself as she floated further and further away from Kuwabara. He watched her leave with his mouth open. He'd been prepared to push back, to deflect and distract her inevitable curiosity—but instead she'd given him space. But why? Why had she gone and done that when she was usually so dang curious?

The image of _her_ face flashed through his head. She'd been curious when she first came to Human World. She'd asked a hundred questions about society, culture, customs, and he'd been an open book about all of it—and suddenly words bubbled on his tongue, like he'd unearthed some hot spring from beneath ten thousand tons of earth.

"Oh, _hell_ ," Kuwabara said as Roza settled into her spot on the window sill. "You're dead, right?"

Her head moved an inch or two in his direction. "Last time I checked," she muttered. She scowled and tossed her hair and rolled her eyes, hard. "Also: _Wow_ , Kuwabara. Way to remind me that I'm dead, bro! Your sense of subtlety and delicacy are just top notch, like, oh my _god!_ "

"Sorry, sorry—it's just, Yukina..." For a second he paused, but then he took a deep breath and decided to just come out with it. "Well, you see, Roza—Yukina is a demon."

Roza didn't move.

And then her teeth flashed and she flew across the room straight at him. Kuwabara yelped, leaping from his chair and backpedaling toward the door until his shoulder blades collided with it. Roza zoomed up to him, coming nose to nose as her toes barely skimmed the floor, holding his gaze with hers as sweat beaded on his forehead. He read anger in the set of her pink-painted lips, not to mention frustration in the set of her perfectly arched eyebrows as she looked him over, her face screwing up like he represented some kind of problem she needed to solve—and then resolution gelled behind her eyes. She lifted her hand over her head and dramatically swept it downward, arm passing through the bulk of his chest like a guillotine. It felt like he'd swallowed a gigantic lump of ice, and when he yelped, Roza gave him a look of satisfaction before wheeling and zooming away into the living room.

"Hey!" Kuwabara yelled after her when he recovered, rubbing at his chest to warm himself. "What the heck was that for?"

Roza spun in place to face him, hands on her hips, feet settling confidently upon the floor. "I don't care if some horrible she-harpy did break your heart," she said, nose thrust high into the air. "I am a feminist and you do _not_ call a woman names like that for making choices about her own damn love life and exercising her agency and—"

Kuwabara's eyes bugged out. "Wait, wait, I don't mean it like _that!_ " he said, throwing up his hands. "I meant it _literally!_ "

Roza scoffed. "Ex- _cuse_ me?"

"Yukina is a demon. A _youkai!_ "

She zoomed toward him. "Stop calling her names!" Roza demanded, arms stretched out to give him another shock of cold.

"I'm _not_ calling her names!" Kuwabara danced around the kitchen table and out of reach; Roza pursued like a cat stalking a mouse. "Yukina is a demon, like—"

Roza stopped chasing him, eyes lighting up. She put a hand to her head and laughed, though there wasn't much humor in it. "Oh, I get it," she said. "Yuki-onna are demons from myth, and her name is Yukina—which means you're making a pun!" Her eyes gleamed; she stretched out her cold, cold hands again. "A pun at the expense of a woman's dignity, however…"

"No!" Kuwabara stood firm that time, meeting Roza's incensed gaze head on. "Yukina is _literally_ a demon! She's from Demon World! She's a demon, a youkai, a _demon_ , goshdarnit!"

Perhaps it was his confident stance that stopped Roza in her tracks. Perhaps it was the truth in his eyes, the way he spoke without a trace of doubt—because he was indeed telling the truth, and anyone with eyes in their head should've been able to see that no matter how unbelievable Kuwabara's claims might sound. He stood his ground, chest thrust out, fists clenched at his sides and expression resolute in his truth as Roza stared at him in shocked silence—but soon she laughed again, hand cupping her forehead as she shook it.

"Yeah, right, Kuwabara," she said, still laughing. "I'm not a little kid. Demons don't exist."

He shook his head. "They do."

"No, they don't," Roza insisted. "Yuki-onna, oni, kappa or whatever? Demons and youkai aren't real. They _can't_ be real!"

Kuwabara pinned her with a stare. "Says the literal ghost."

"… oh. Right. _That_." Roza gazed at him in silence for a moment, remembering the state of her own existence or something—and then her gaze turned absolutely horrified. "Oh my dear sweet lord, you're not kidding," she said. When he nodded, her jaw dropped. "You're _serious_?!"

"Like a heart attack," Kuwabara said, and he dived right in. "So I'm not sure if I'm supposed to tell you this but since you're dead I don't think it matters, but anyway, there are three worlds total and right now we're in Human World but there are also worlds called— "

Near as Kuwabara could figure it, telling a ghost the truth about the three worlds, demons and psychics wasn't breaking any sort of unspoken secrecy code. More and more demons like Yukina were coming to live in Human World, after all. If Roza was still alive, she'd doubtless learn about demons in a few years or decades, and she already knew about ghosts, so… what was the harm in filling her in on the fact that demons existed? The truth of Demon World, Human World and Spirit World? The fact that he was a psychic human and that's why he could see her and why Keiko, a regular human, could not? He spelled it all out for her piece by piece, revealing the truth of existence like you might recount the plot of a book. Roza curled into a ball in the air and listened, staring at him wide-eyed and slackjawed as she absorbed his rant about the three planes and him being a psychic and meeting demons and his powers and, just… everything, y'know? And when he was done he dropped back into his seat at the kitchen table with a sigh, grabbing his mug of cold tea so he could revive his parched and weary throat.

Roza didn't move. She stayed right where she was, a dandelion spore on the air, one knee held to her chest with her arm as her other leg dangled in the air beneath her. Soon she pinched the bridge of her nose and looked down, staring at the floor hard enough to drill a hole straight through the polished floorboards.

"Oh my _god,"_ she muttered. "This is incredible." But as Kuwabara started to preen, proud of himself, her eyes flickered incredulously in his direction. "It's incredible—as in, _without credibility_. Everything you just said is _literally unbelievable_." She lifted her hand and glared at it, clenching and unclenching her fist with a grimace. "And the stupidest part is that I have no right to question any of it because _I'm a literal ghost_. Funny how death puts the possibility of the impossible into perspective." Her eyes rose to meet his, hesitant but unyielding. "Can I ask for one thing?"

Kuwabara nodded. "Sure."

"I believe you're telling me the truth, or at least, I believe you _think_ you're telling the truth—but this is all so hard to swallow, y'know?"

"Yeah." He vividly remembered the day he learned about demons; Roza must be going through the same kind of reckoning, he figured, and he needed to do his best to ease her into this craziness. "So what can I do?"

"Glad you asked." She drew herself up, jacket slipping off one golden shoulder as her chin inclined. "If you don't mind… the Spirit Sword you mentioned. Can I see that? It sounds pretty nuts but if this is all real, you can't fake it. Seeing that Sword might sort of, y'know, prove to me that—"

He summoned it before she finished speaking.

The sight of it shut her up, _fast_.

Kuwabara wasn't really the bragging sort, but he wasn't the type to deny the obvious, either. His sword was cool as heck, bright yellow-gold with sparkly sparks in myriad colors floating in and around the column of brilliant light. It reflected in the depths of Roza's wide eyes, turning her brown irises to the color of rich amber all struck through with lightning. He held the sword out for her to look at, watching in pleased satisfaction as her jaw dropped and she muttered something in a tone of pure, unadulterated admiration.

That something she muttered was, "Holy fucking _shitballs_."

"Heh." He maneuvered the sword through the air in a few broad sweeps and precise jabs; Roza's eyes stayed fixed upon it, as entranced as a cat following a laser pointer. Chest and pride both swelling, Kuwabara said, "I guess this must be pretty impressive, huh?"

"Holy fucking shit," said Roza, "you're a _Jedi_."

His arm froze. "Wait, what?"

"You." She lifted a finger and pointed it at him. "You're a goddamn Jedi!"

His brow quirked. "I didn't know you liked Star Wars."

Roza scoffed. "Who doesn't like Star Wars?"

"Trekkies like you, for starters."

"That's actually an unfortunate stereotype; I'm intergalactic Switzerland and— _goddammit that's not the point!"_ She flew toward him with a delighted giggle, floating around him in a quick circle to view the sword from every angle possible. "You have a light saber! You have _a fucking light saber hand!"_ She ascended toward the ceiling and then flopped over backwards; she apparently had a very flexible back for a ghost, because she managed to perform a very impressive backbend and put her face on Kuwabara's level, giggling and beaming as she stared at the Spirit Sword. He backed up a pace at her proximity, but she just giggled and winked. "Kazuma, has anyone told you you're a treat?" she said, still dangling upside down. "I mean, just a literal _snack?_ "

His face flushed. "Oh, cut it out," he said, but he didn't mean it because Roza was looking at him with enthusiastic admiration so intense, his confidence couldn't help but soar. "Seriously. Stop, stop!"

Roza grinned. "Nah. I won't." She flipped back over, lying on her belly in the air with chin propped on both her hands. "That's fucking _rad_ , man. That's rad as hell!" And then she was zooming in uncontrollable circles through the air, laughing all the while. "I live with a Jedi! I live with a goddamn Jedi!" She paused in her joy-spiral, though, and put a finger to her chin in thought. "Well. 'Live' might not be the word. I cohabitate." And then she was giggling again, dancing in place in a little ecstatic circle. "But still, how _cool!_ You are the best roommate _ever!_ "

It goes without saying that Kuwabara's ego had reached critical mass by then. He swung the Spirit Sword around a few more times, showing Roza the bending and curving tricks he could perform with it; she laughed and crowed and cheered at every single one, thoroughly impressed and unafraid to show it—and when he thought of that, about how openly and enthusiastically Roza called him the best roommate ever, _her_ face flashed through his head.

Specifically, the image of _her_ face on the day he found her at the kitchen table flashed through his head. The coffee had turned to ice in her hands, and her eyes were as cold as the glaciers she called home.

Kuwabara's good mood deflated in an instant.

And Roza noticed. She stopped her flying, touching down upon the floor beside him with concern written across her face. He banished his sword and shoved his hands in his pockets as Roza murmured something worried and soft he didn't fully comprehend.

"She—" He swallowed, trying to find the words. "She didn't necessarily agree about that last part. About me being a good roommate."

"Oh." Roza's good mood deflated, too, sorrow eclipsing the light in her bright eyes. "Right."

"Yeah." He swallowed again, trying to combat the sudden lump in his throat. "Yukina and I were…"

Kuwabara stopped talking. Roza waited a few seconds, but when he said nothing, she reached for his arm. She pulled her fingers back just before she touched him, though, regret lancing across her face and disappearing again just as quickly.

"Did I guess right earlier?" she said, hands disappearing into her jacket pockets. "About the heartbreak?"

Kuwabara could only nod.

"That talk about visitation made it kind of obvious. That's breakup-aftermath sort of stuff." Her lips twisted, empathy turning her eyes to pits of glimmering sorrow. "I'm sorry," she said. "Like, really. I'm _so_ sorry. Breakups suck. You don't have to give me the specifics, but just…" A shrug, helpless and heartfelt. "Just know that I'm sorry, OK?"

"Thanks." The word came automatically, but Kuwabara meant it nonetheless. When he tried to summon more than that small sentiment, however, speech caught in his throat. He shook his head a few times more. "I don't think I'm ready to talk about it. Not yet, anyway."

Roza smiled. "That's OK."

"Just… that guy Keiko mentioned. Yusuke? I told you he and I were wrapped up in some stuff involving demons. That's how I met Yukina. So now that we're no longer togeth…"

The lump in his throat had turned into a shard of glass.

Roza said nothing as he worked through it. More than once she tried to reach for him—to pat his shoulder, or take his hand—but each time she seemed to remember herself and hold back just before her ghostly hand could touch him. Kuwabara watched her struggle intently, because watching her meant he didn't have to think about the horrible empty pit that had opened underneath his heart.

"You'll probably hear me talk about demons more eventually," he said when he found the ability to speak again. "Keiko is a regular human, but some of my other friends aren't. Some are demons; some are human psychics. I didn't want you to be confused if it came up. That's why I told you everything." He waited for her to nod before continuing, trying to drag the subject in another direction as best he could. "Most of them will be able to see you, probably, too. Demons can see ghosts I think, but Keiko is just a vanilla human. Not psychic at all. She's actually one of the few normal people I hang out with who can't see ghosts and stuff." That was why he liked her, actually—because she was normal, keeping him grounded no matter how weird his supernatural life became. "But the rest…"

Roza shrugged. "The rest sound hella cool, if I'm being honest."

"Cool?" That wasn't what he'd expected to hear from her; sure, she thought the Spirit Sword was cool, but to accept demons so easily… "You mean you're not freaked out?"

"I'm _dead_." Roza spoke with the matter-of-fact bluntness of a sledgehammer, not flinching from the truth even a little bit. "I'm dead and ghosts are real. Adding demons to the mix is just par for the course." She grinned. "And hell. It's nice to know you've got buddies who could see me. You're lovely and all, but I'm always up for a new conversation partner no matter the specie." Roza pretended to jab at his ribs with her elbow, not quite making contact. "Throw a fuckin' party whydontcha, Mister Shut-In-Jedi-Man? You're a regular Obi-Wan Kenobi, living out here alone in the desert of Tatooine, _New-Hope_ style!" For some reason, that made her laugh; she slapped her knee and cackled, "Holy shit, you're _Obi-wan Kabara!_ "

That got him laughing, too. "With a name like that, maybe I will throw a party." He leaned toward her and cupped a hand around his mouth to whisper, "Just don't tell Yusuke about the nickname. He'd call me a nerd!"

He said it to make her laugh. But she didn't laugh. Just the opposite, in fact. Her face fell, shutters closing behind her eyes. She backed up a step, meeting his eyes as she rolled her lips together.

"No 'maybe'; just 'should'. You should throw a huge rager when you get a chance." Her lips curled, but the smile trembled the slightest bit. "Spend time with your friends while you have them, Kuwabara. I'd die all over again if I could see my friends again."

The earnestness in her voice, the conviction—it made him wonder something. "Do you remember…?"

Her head hung. "No," she said. "I was just speaking metaphorically, I guess. You're the only friend I have, these days." The quiet sadness vanished from her voice as she lifted her head again, glaring at him as she poked one icy, immaterial finger at his broad chest. "So people like Keiko who come and check in on you? Throw a party. Invite them over. Show 'em that you care. Don't let them think you don't give a shit, because you might run out of time to tell them just how many shits you give." The bitterest of smiles. "I know I did."

Because he didn't know what else to say, and because it was true, he told her: "That's good advice."

Roza nodded a few times—and then she shook herself like a person shaking off the shroud of deepest sleep. "Speaking of good advice and parties," she said with new, sly energy and the most devilish of smiles. "You know what they say about the best way to get over someone, right?"

Kuwabara (who had been thrown for a real big loop by Roza's about-face in demeanor) just gaped at her. "No?"

"Oh, _ho_." Her laugh was as sly as her smile, but her wink was the slyest of all. "Well, baby boy, lemme tell ya. The best way to get over someone is to get _under_ someone el—"

Kuwabara yelped. "Hey! You're a pervert!" he said as his face turned red.

"Guilty as charged!" Roza cackled. "Now go do your homework, innocent angel child." She cackled again. "Ha! My little padawan! I love it!"

Kuwabara couldn't look at her for a little while after that. He couldn't focus on his homework, either, because every time Roza laughed at the episode of _Friends_ she soon began to watch, he thought of the way she'd looked when she told him to get under someone else. The mischievous gleam in her eye, the column of her neck as she threw back her head to laugh, the way her long, slender fingers tugged at the silk scarf around her throat—

It was hard, sometimes, to remember Roza was dead. She was too _lively_ to seem dead, making jokes and dispensing sage advice from beyond the grave. He snuck a glance at her as he pretended to do homework. She sat before the TV with her knees against her chest, chin resting upon then as she giggled at something Chandler said. Man, she loved that show—and Kuwabara couldn't help but wonder if she loved it because those on-screen friends were kinda like surrogate friends of her own. She certainly had gotten excited at the prospect of meeting more people who could see her. Not to mention she'd been so insistent about him inviting friends over to a party, just so they would know he cared…

An image of Keiko flashed through his head, and the words she'd spoken to him echoed in her image's wake.

"Yusuke misses you like crazy," she'd said.

Did anyone out there miss Roza like crazy, too?

He snuck another glance at her.

She watched the TV without speaking, the smallest of smiles painted across her pretty face.

Without a word, Kuwabara got up.

He put on his jacket, told Roza he'd be back shortly, and hoofed it to the corner store payphone on the end of the block. He had just enough change in his jacket to place a call, and when the line engaged, Kuwabara began to smile.

"Hey, Yusuke? It's me," he said, "and I need a favor."

* * *

NOTES

 _My update schedule for this story got a little screwball. Sorry about that, y'all! I started a new job (it's very fun and in the anime industry) and I didn't get to write on my lunch breaks like usual for a while, resulting in a big delay on lots of projects. But we're back in the swing of it now, and I aim to resume my biweekly updates from here on out. Expect the next chapter sometime around March 16 or so, AKA the weekend after next._

 _These lovely cats make my world go 'round: Melina, Deamachi, Ladyghoul1, Ink Outside the Lines, Blaze1662001, rya-fire1, Easily Amused 93, kykygrly, OdinaReaper, IronDBZ, KonekoNoRenkinjutsushi and a guest!_


	18. Chapter 18: There Was a Foot in My Mouth

Warnings: None

* * *

The Ghost in You

Chapter 18:

"There Was a Foot in My Mouth?!"

* * *

It was cold, and rainy, and Kuwabara wasn't wearing any shoes.

But this was his fault, really. He had no one to blame but himself for his shoeless-ness. He stood of his own volition on his balcony in his bare feet, scanning the skies as rain fell in misty shrouds to the street below. He had been the one to set the meeting time and place, just as he had been the one who'd failed to check the weather forecast and notice the impending rain. If he'd only thought ahead, he could've set the meeting time and place for somewhere indoors, where rain was much less likely to fall (barring the roof, like, caving in or whatever; you never knew).

Or perhaps not thinking ahead was just par for the course, insofar as both his apartment and his ghost-related meetings were concerned. He shifted from foot to foot as he tried to ignore the irony of it all, chafing his goosebump-covered arms as he tossed the water from his hair (which he was sure would fall out of style soon; his pomade didn't like getting wet). The people in the apartment next to him hadn't checked the weather either, it looked like. They'd hung laundry out to dry on a set of portable lines; it was a sodden mess now. They'd have to re-wash it. Kuwabara didn't envy them one bit.

Luckily the person he was meeting was the punctual sort. Soon his eyes alit on a little multicolor blob in the distance, sailing high through the sky over the roofs of the apartment buildings and business around his apartment complex. The blob got bigger and bigger every second, and soon Kuwabara raised his hand in greeting. He still couldn't quite make out the flying person's face, but the blue hair gave them away in a snap.

Botan's cheery chatter, which began many meters beyond the railing of his balcony, also helped. "Hello, Kuwabara!" she called as she came to a stop about a meter away, floating on thin air on her oar. "It's great to see you!"

"You too, Botan." He couldn't help but smile at her; Botan's good mood was contagious. "So I suppose you're wondering why Yusuke asked you to come meet me here, and—"

Botan lurched toward him, gripping the balcony rail with both hands. "So is _she_ really a _she?_ "

He blinked. "Huh?"

"Is she really a she, or isn't she?" Botan swatted at his arm when he just stared at her, laughter bright and good-natured, but of course her fingers passed straight through him with the feeling of a cold breeze; she wasn't wearing a body just then, existing only in the form of her soul. Unperturbed, Botan said, "Oh, don't look so surprised—Yusuke told me everything, that you cleansed the fixated spirit in your apartment and that she turned out to be a _she_ under all that darkness. We've all wondered about her over the years, and—"

Took him a minute to catch up with her babbling. "Wait, wait, wait!" he sputtered. "You know about Roza?"

"Roza? Oh, do you mean the ghost? Yusuke didn't mention you'd named her but, well, of _course_ know about her, silly! _All_ the reapers in this area know about _that_ —I mean, about _her_." Her cheeks pinked a little. "Not really polite to keep calling her a 'that' now that I know she's a 'she' and suchlike, but anyway." Her oar carried her backwards through the air, but only so she could get a running (flying?) start. "Now out of my way; I want to see her for myself!"

And with that, Botan rushed forward and straight through Kuwabara, phasing through the (closed) sliding glass door behind him and into the bedroom beyond. Kuwabara yelped, telling her not to go so fast because he had questions he wanted to ask, dammit, but it was no use. By the time he wrenched the door open and pelted into the living room, Botan had already cornered Roza over by the kitchen.

And Roza didn't look happy about it. She floated up near the ceiling like a frightened will-o'-the-wisp, her hair coarse and stringy as it crept along the walls and ceiling, miring Roza in place in the upper corner like a spider in its black, sticky web. Botan stood below with her mouth open, gazing at Roza's all-black eyes and spoiled-milk skin without any sign of fear.

No. The fear turning the air to rancid fumes in Kuwabara's mouth came entirely from Roza, who looked nearly as bad-off as she had before Kuwabara purified her with Genkai's ritual.

Not that that meant anything to Botan, who had put her hands to her cheeks with a rustle of soft pink kimono. "Oh, good heavens," she breathed, magenta eyes glimmering, "but you're _lovely_ , now aren't you?"

This comment was _absolutely not reflective_ of how Roza looked just then, so as Kuwabara padded to Botan's side, all he felt capable of uttering was a flummoxed, "Huh?!"

"I mean, it's just so unexpected!" Botan stared at Roza with undisguised admiration (and Roza stared back with fear now cut by wary confusion). "You were in such a sorry state before, darkness creepy-crawling all over you from head to toe, but _now_ look at you! You're so lovely and vibrant and your energy is just—oh, but where are my manners? Silly me!" She dipped a low bow and straightened back up with another cheerful laugh. "My name is Botan, guide to the River Styx; it's very nice to meet you—"

Roza's black eyes widened, dark pits in a pale face. "The River Styx?" she said—and then like water sucking down a drain, Roza seemed to spiral in on herself. She sank backward and out of sight into the web of ichor-dripping hair, which then sluiced down the wall to puddle on the floor. The puddle (with a horrible squelching sound) sped across the floor toward Kuwabara's feet, blending with the shadows there until it disappeared from view. Botan gasped, and Kuwabara followed suit when a cold breath puffed against his nape. A low voice whispered in his ear, "Kuwabara, she's not here to—?"

He spun in place. Roza had manifested behind him through his shadow. She stood with weight spread between both feet, limbs rigid as if preparing to run, but somehow she still managed to shrink against his side like a frightened dog, staring around him with terrified black eyes at Botan. Her hands trembled, and even though the air in the room had dropped by at least ten degrees in the past eight seconds, Kuwabara still reached for her on reflex. He pulled his hand back, though, and instead gestured at Botan.

"Oh, no, no, no, she's not here to take you to heaven," he assured her, because Roza's worry was patently obvious (or at least it was to him). Hoping his smile might ameliorate her fears a bit, he grinned and told her, "Botan's an old friend of mine and I just thought maybe you two might get along, y'know? Since she's a reaper, she can see you—"

Roza's chest hitched. "You _promise_ she's not here to take me away?" she said, voice no louder than a whisper.

Kuwabara nodded. "Yeah. I promise." He gestured at Botan again. "Botan's really nice. She'd never make you do anything you don't want to." And then he turned his smile Botan's way. "Isn't that right, Botan?"

Botan was staring at the pair of them in wonder—with interest tinged by the barest iota of confusion—and when Kuwabara said her name, she flinched, smile flying back into place on her pink lips. "Truth be told, I couldn't make you go to the next world even if I wanted to," she said to Roza, as if sharing an embarrassing secret. "Dragging an unwilling spirit to the afterlife is simply more trouble than it's worth, and consent is key when guiding a soul past the edges of the mortal realm. You are quite safe, I assure you." Another of her bright laughs. "I wouldn't hurt a fly!"

Roza stared without moving.

Then, slowly, the matted hair on her ponytail smoothed back into lustrous brown. Her eyes stayed black, though, as she looked anxiously at Kuwabara. " _You_ brought her here?" she asked, stepping close to him.

He nodded.

She searched his face. "Why?"

"Well. It's like you said: I'm a great conversation partner, but it's time you widened your circle a bit, right?" He rubbed the back of his neck, nerves making his smile wobble. "And besides. You said you wanted a guidebook to the afterlife, like in _Beetlejuice_? Well, I don't have a guidebook, but I do have a guide, and that's gotta be even better than the book as far as I'm concerned." It was his turn to search her face, looking down into her upturned features as he swallowed the lump in his throat. "Right?"

Roza said nothing. Botan, off to the side, likewise said nothing (but he could sense waves of awkward hoping wafting off of her, buffeting his awareness like the tide buffets the shore). Roza's intense expression and fearful energy soon grated on him, try though he might to stay stoic, and before long he offered Roza another big, cheesy grin.

"Plus, I just think the two of you would get along." He shrugged. "That's all."

For a second, Roza didn't move—but then her lips twitched, giving away her smile before it surfaced in full. The black drained from her eyes, shrinking back into the point of her pupil as if sucked down by a magnet. Her big brown eyes soon flickered Botan's way, slowly looking the reaper over as she stepped out of Kuwabara's shadow and into the light. Soon she gave a nod, as if Botan had passed some kind of test. Her body language changed, too, one hip jutting out as she crossed her arms and transferred her weight to one foot.

"OK," she said, as if thinking things through before speaking. Soon she shook her head, ponytail flying in a silken flag. "Well, then. My name is Roza, since you asked." Her middle and pointer fingers on her right hand lifted, though she didn't uncross her arms. "And I have two questions."

Botan beamed. "Name them!"

"One. Who the _hell_ does your hair dye, girl, because that color is ah-mazing?" Roza put down one finger. "And, two: You said you know me?"

"Why, of _course_ I do, silly!" Botan said as Roza put down her other finger. "Ferrygirls do so love their gossip, and since you've run afoul of my coworkers a time or two over the years—"

Roza started. "I _have?_ " she said.

And at the same time Kuwabara said, "She _has?_ "

But Botan didn't seem peeved by the interruption. She merely giggled as Roza and Kuwabara looked at each other, surprise like paint on each of their faces.

"I'm not surprised you don't remember," Botan said to Roza. Her eyes glittered with sympathy, smile turning a little sad. "The darkness that enveloped you likely obscured your memory somewhat. It happens with the extreme cases, and you were definitely among the most extreme. You're a little bit famous, you know, like a local celebrity—but a celebrity of a slightly infamous nature, if we're being honest."

Roza's jaw dropped. "Wait, _seriously?_ "

"Yes! You've been a troublemaker for a good long while now. Try though they might, the other ferrygirls have never been able to get you to budge. You were quite tightly fixated to this place and simply refused to leave, or so I'm told. You've sent quite a few junior ferrygirls running for the hills, and more than one of them came crying to me for advice." Botan looked Roza over for a moment, tittering. "None of my advice appears to have worked, however, since you're still here. Some of my juniors actually thought you might be a demon's ghost given how dark you were—um." She stopped talking, looking like she'd said too much. "But, anyway. I do _so_ love that you're feeling better these days. I'm sure the other reapers will find you much more pleasant now that you—"

"Wait." Roza squinted at Botan for a minute. "That oar you had earlier."

Botan's head listed to the side. "Hmm?"

"I remember…" She squinted some more. "I remember a woman. A woman in a kimono. With an oar." Roza paused, running her fingers through her ponytail a few times. Words slow, but steady, she said: "She came here, told me I needed to go, and I—I think I tried to chew on her foot?" Roza stuck out her tongue. "Ew! _Ew!"_ She looked at Kuwabara in horror. _"There was a foot in my mouth?!"_

Kuwabara couldn't help it: At the stunned and disgusted look on her face, he chortled loud and long and with gusto, bending at the waist to put his hands on his knees. Roza gaped, barked an offended "HEY!" and then passed her ice water hand through his neck in revenge. Botan laughed when he yelped and darted away, Roza in hot, vengeful pursuit.

"Yes, that was one of my colleagues, and that sounds about right," Botan said as Roza chased Kuwabara in a quick circle around the kitchen table, hell-bent on further revenge. "A few of them described you as, well… ravenous."

Botan shuddered at the thought.

And Roza noticed her shuddering. She came to a stop in her pursuit, staring at the floor in obvious embarrassment. Kuwabara did a double-take, then retraced his steps to stand beside her, grinning ear to ear. She needed a distraction, stat, so he said: "Hey, Roza, that's great! You remembered something!"

Roza frowned. "I did?" And then she grinned, feet coming off the ground as she thrust a fist into the air. "I did, didn't I? That's awesome!" Her feet soon resettled on the floorboards; a mischievous grin crossed her face. "And leave it to me to be known as the neighborhood badass, eh?"

"Hey!" Kuwabara said. "You weren't notorious for good reasons, remember?"

Roza smirked. "I don't remember _shit_ , actually." She reached for him, trying to tickle his ribs with her ghostly fingers. "So _ha!_ "

Before she could succeed, Botan cut in with another distraction (and Kuwabara made a mental note to thank her, but later). "That's right," she said. "When Yusuke got in touch with me and told me about you, Roza, he mentioned that you don't remember very much about your past life. Your full name, where you're from, or even how you di—I mean, ahem." She looked guilty when Roza's face spasmed, but she soldiered on. "Do you remember anything? Anything at all?"

Roza shook her head. "Not so much." A moment's hesitation. "Sometimes little things slip through, but nothing big."

For a second, Kuwabara didn't quite track what she'd admitted—but then it clicked. His brow furrowed as his mouth opened, but before he could as Roza what she meant by that, she launched across the room and wrapped her hand around Botan's wrist.

"But enough about that!" she said, dragging Botan toward the couch. "Tell me about _you_. I haven't made a new friend in ages and I want all the deets! How'd you meet our sweet baby angel Kuwabara? Tell me more about that Yusuke guy you both keep mentioning. What's it like being a reaper and is the afterlife cool and—?"

Botan dutifully sat on the couch and answered all of Roza's questions one by one, being her normal delightful self as usual. Roza said cross-legged on the cushion beside her, gripping her ankles as she drank down everything Botan had to say—and Botan had a lot to say, mainly because Roza had a lot of questions, and Botan was longwinded even at the best of times. Kuwabara watched them for a bit in silence, soon moving to the kitchen table to do homework. Best let Roza make a new friend in peace. He had no freakin' clue how girls bonded or whatever, and he'd be damned if he got in the way of Roza's potential friendship with Botan. That had been the entire point of calling Botan here, after all.

Well. _Almost_ the entire point. But he'd save his side of things until the girls were done.

Even though he spent that afternoon doing homework, he paid enough attention to the girls to notice that Botan did most of the talking. Roza asked question after question, keeping topics focused squarely on Botan's job, Botan's preferences, and how Botan met Kuwabara (a meeting Botan mercifully described as normal and awesome, not mentioning that Kuwabara had had a crush on her at first, and also not bringing up Yukina even once—good ol' Botan). Roza smiled through it all, looking awed and engaged and happy. It was nice to see her looking that happy, Kuwabara privately decided—and he felt just a little guilty for not getting in contact with Botan sooner.

Not that he hadn't had a good reason for not contacting Botan, of course. Truth be told, he'd been a little afraid of what Spirit World would do to Roza if they became aware of her. That's why he'd gone to Yusuke, first, to get his opinion on the situation before requesting he pass a message to Botan. Botan didn't come out to Tokyo very much, and it wasn't like Grim Reapers had cell phones. Getting to her through Yusuke seemed like his best bet (not to mention his only option). He just felt lucky that everything had worked out as well as it had, and that getting Botan involved wouldn't spell disaster for Roza. He trusted Botan, and if she said she wouldn't force Roza into the afterlife, he trusted her to keep her word.

The shadows on the floor grew long, and then they grew longer still. Botan stood up and stretched when the shadows started to fade away in time with the rain-clouded sunset outside; her shoulders gave a little pop, and she sighed as she gave the windows a forlorn glance.

"Well, this has been so much fun, Roza—really, it has," she said, regret already creeping into her voice. "I've enjoyed myself immensely."

"Uh-oh." Roza stood, too, with a grimace. "That sounds like an 'I've got to go' preamble."

"It is, unfortunately. My shift starts in an hour and I have quite a few souls to guide before the night is through."

"Gotcha." Roza shifted from foot to foot, chewing on her lower lip. "Well, not to be too clingy, but if you're ever in the neighborhood and want to vent about work…"

"Oh, of course! I'd love a girl's night in." Botan giggled and winked. "I've never tried doing a ghost's hair before, but something tells me we'd have a blast figuring it out!"

Quietly, so as not to disturb them as they said their goodbyes and made promises to stay in touch, Kuwabara stood up and walked into his bedroom. Soon Botan followed. Without a word he opened his balcony door, letting Botan walk through ahead of him before shutting the door behind them both.

Botan had already summoned and mounted her oar by the time he turned around. The light of the nearby streetlamps passed through her the slightest bit, illuminating the diaphanous vision of her body like a candle in a paper lantern. It couldn't quite match the incandescent light of her smile, though, as she tossed her blue ponytail and heaved a satisfied sigh.

"She really is just _lovely_ , Kuwabara," Botan said with a wistful glance at his apartment. "I'm very glad your purification ritual worked and that she's back to her old self. She wasn't on my patrol route so I never personally saw her before the ritual, but from what I've heard, she was quite the monster. Now, though, she's a treat!" She put a hand to her chin, lips pursing. "The memory problem is an issue, I'll admit, and it will be difficult for her to pass over without knowing who she is, but…"

"Say." Kuwabara leaned his elbows on the balcony rail. "You said those ferrygirls used to come and try to get her to move on, right?"

Botan nodded. "I did."

"Do y'think any of them might know her full name, or just know who she is?" This is what he'd really wanted to talk to Botan about, but there was no sense in upsetting Roza, so he'd had to wait until he got Botan alone again. "Spirit World's got those files on people and whatnot, right? She can't remember the details herself, so even if they can just help me pinpoint the time she appeared as a ghost, maybe I can see if anyone died around that time, and then—"

Botan gasped. "That's a wonderful idea, Kuwabara!"

"Really? Cool!" He'd been a bit afraid Botan would tell him files like that were classified or something equally stupid, so this was a nice surprise. Eagerly he leaned over the railing, beaming at her as he talked. "Now I went ahead and did some research and I know she must have lived here before 1989 because there was this big earthquake that year and stuff, and I think based on her clothes she probably lived here in the mid-80s? Or late? Something like that, I know it's vague and I'm sorry, but that might be a good starting point, and…"

"And it's wonderful," Botan said when he trailed off. "Any information helps and you've done your due diligence already, it seems. I've always said you would have been a great detective candidate, and I stand by it." Kuwabara ducked his head, embarrassed but pleased, as she looked skyward. Her eyes were somehow distant, as if she could already see the gates of Spirit World opening before her. "I'll ask the ferrygirls who've tangled with Roza before and see if they recall any of the juicy details, or even if they can scrounge up her file. Even if they can't, they should be able to give us some more leads." Botan hesitated a moment, her eyes meeting Kuwabara's with a look of furtive anguish. Voice quiet, she said, "I didn't want to say so in front of Roza, but apparently she was so vicious, they just stopped trying to collect her after a while. Happens sometimes with the more extreme cases. I didn't want her feeling self-conscious, though, so I didn't mention it earlier."

Kuwabara nodded and tried to ignore the way his chest hitched at Botan's whispered words. "Good thinking."

She nodded back, oar rising a few inches through the air. "Well, I'd best be off," she said. "I'll swing by when I learn something good, I promise!"

"Awesome." As she turned to fly away, Kuwabara leaned over the railing again, swiping his hand at the hem of her robe. "Oh, wait—and Botan?"

She stopped moving, head turning over her shoulder. "Yes?"

"Please come back sometime. Not for information or whatever—but for Roza." He looked down at the street below, and for some reason his cheeks began to heat. "She's lonely. I'm gone all day and I do my work all night, so if she could have someone else to talk to sometime…"

"Kuwabara," Botan said.

He kept talking before she could say more. "Roza is really great," he said, looking at Botan as he set his jaw like determined steel. "She's funny and kind and considerate and smart, and sometimes she's a smartass, yeah, and—" He swallowed, looking down again. "What I mean to say is that she's a nice person, or ghost, or whatever, and she deserves friends. So if you can be that, whenever you have a moment to spare…"

He trailed off. Botan giggled.

"Isn't that just like you, to care for her like that?" she said. "You always have had a soft spot for women in distress."

"Yeah." He rubbed the back of his neck, not liking the heat that still hadn't faded from his neck. "Maybe."

Botan laughed again. "Don't look so glum, Kuwabara," she said, drawing his reluctant eyes to her. "You made a great pitch. I'll be back before you know it; you'll see." And with that, she streaked off into the dark, hair and the hem of her robe flying behind her like the sweep of a bird's quick wings. "See you soon!"

Kuwabara watched her until she faded from view.

He trusted Botan.

She hadn't said when, exactly, she'd return… but he trusted that she would.

* * *

NOTES

 _This wasn't intentional, but it occurred to me today that this story has been very female-cast centric. We've had Botan, Keiko and Genkai make appearances, plus there was that phone call to Shizuru. I'm enjoying that this fic has presented me with opportunities to focus on characters who aren't always represented in fics. It's been neat._

 _See you weekend after next (March 30-31-ish)._

 _Big thanks to all y'all who read chapter 17. You make my world go 'round: KonekoNoRenkinjutsushi, McMousie, Melina, Ink Outside the Lines, Blaze1662001, reebajee, Deamachi, o-dragon, EasilyAmused93, Ladyghoul1!_


	19. Chapter 19: Friends

Warnings: None

* * *

The Ghost in You

Chapter 19:

"Friends"

* * *

After Kuwabara walked Botan out to the balcony, he was gone an awfully long time.

Not that that bothered me or anything. Seriously. It was no business of mine how Kuwabara said goodbye to his friends—even the really, _really_ pretty friends with brilliant hair that Botan claimed wasn't even dyed, which seemed impossible to me or whatever, but I digress.

Kuwabara stayed out there on the balcony with Botan for far longer than I personally thought was necessary. I hovered in his bedroom door waiting for him to come back, watching him through the balcony's sliding glass door as he leaned over the railing to talk to Botan with a big, bright smile on his face. She smiled back, hovering over the edge of the balcony in midair on her oar. Her ponytail was even longer than mine, the blue color scintillating in the light of the nearby streetlamp (which also seemed impossible since she was a spirit and not a solid person; maybe her hair was just weird or something?). I tried not to look at Botan's cute face or pretty kimono too closely, instead staring at Kuwabara's grinning profile. He had a nice profile, I decided eventually. You could really tell how square his jawline was from this angle, and his old-fashioned Yankee haircut almost looked modern when seen from the almost-but-not-quite-back.

Just what the heck were Kuwabara and Botan talking about, though, anyway?

That unspoken question made me shiver; touching the scarf around my throat for reassurance, I drifted away from the bedroom and into the living room, toward the windows by the easy-chair overlooking the street below. Can you blame me for getting bored of just lurking in the doorway and asking myself stupid questions? I mean, I'm a ghost, but I'm not a creeper or anything, nor am I the kind of person who likes to pretend to know things I definitely, _definitely_ know—namely that Kuwabara and Botan had to be talking about me, obviously. They were probably talking about my missing identity and how I had di…

That was one question, stupid or otherwise, I wasn't quite willing to indulge.

I settled on the windowsill, one leg stretched along its length and the other held to my chest. The sill was only an inch or so wide. Impossible for a flesh-and-blood person to sit on, but totally chill for my ghostly ass to use as a perch. Being dead had its perks. I kept an eye on the sky and leaned my head against the window (which felt distant and rubbery against my not-face, like it was made of trampoline material and I had acquired nerve damage). Normally I sat there to watch the fashion of the passersby on the sidewalk beneath the windows, but I didn't have the heart for that just then. Instead I angled my head as much as I could toward Kuwabara's bedroom window, out of sight since it lay along the same wall as my window seat. I pressed my head against the glass, which wouldn't let me pass the way the walls and doors in the apartment always would, and kept an eye out until a flicker of blue appeared; Botan sailed upward and away from the building, heading off into the dark night sky and out of sight. A minute later the balcony door slid opened with a metallic zippering sound. Kuwabara's feet padded softly over the carpeted bedroom floor toward the living room, and then he appeared in the living room doorway with a grin stretched across his blocky features.

I saw that grin, not to mention his reappearance, in the window reflection, though. I'd made sure to turn my face away before he came inside. Didn't want him thinking I'd been waiting for him like a lost puppy, right?

If he saw through me, he had the good sense not to say anything, at least. "So what did you think of Botan?" was all he said as he strode over to the easy chair, which he plopped into with a contented sigh.

I shrugged, still not looking at him. "She was cool."

He paused. Then, prompting me with the same tone of voice you use on shy kindergarteners, he said: "So she was _cool_ , huh?"

I touched the silken scarf around my neck, fingering the cold fabric (as I tried not to wonder how it was possible to even do so in the first place). "I mean. Yeah?" I told him, lamely. "She was."

One thin brow arched, and his face looked all the more angular for it. "… that's it?" he said, skepticism like paint spilled across his words. "She's just _cool?_ "

I shifted in my spot atop the sill. "… I mean, that's a pretty ringing endorsement, so…?"

"I guess so?" he said, but he still didn't sound convinced.

Something told me he wanted to talk about Botan more, but I reminded him that a TV show I liked was on and he reluctantly left me to my afternoon drama. Kuwabara did homework at the kitchen table after that. Sometimes I thought I felt him looking at me, but I kept my eyes locked carefully on the TV and didn't glance at him to confirm. I didn't want him prying into how I felt about Botan—not because she hadn't been a lot of fun or anything, because of _course_ she'd been fun. A barrel of laughs and a totally chill girl, really? But nice though she'd been, I had to wonder if Kuwabara would get offended if I told him about the way the room had gotten so damn _cold_ when Botan walked into it. Cool though she'd been, the minute I saw her, my not-blood had turned to ice inside me. Neat though our conversation was, something in the back of my head kept telling me to _flee and run away, run for your not-life, don't go near her, run!_ as we sat beside one another on the couch. A sort of yawning darkness waiting to swallow me lurked behind Botan's smiling eyes, and no matter how chipper and bubbly the reaper was, Botan was still exactly that—a grim freakin' reaper who guided dead souls (like yours truly) to the great beyond. And I wasn't ready to move on just yet, thank you oh so much.

… but at the same time, I'd been not-living with a _boy_ for so damn long that getting to talk to an actual freakin' _girl_ for a few hours had been too amazing an opportunity to pass up, the chill winds of danger said girl brought with her notwithstanding.

The hour soon dragged late, and eventually Kuwabara closed his book and yawned. He bid me a sleepy good night and went to bed, his snores filtering through his bedroom door and into the living room where I'd stayed up to watch some late-night talk shows. When those ended in the wee hours of the morning, I wandered the apartment watching the no-signal-static buzz on the TV, and when that got too boring to bear, too, I followed Kuwabara into the bedroom, slipped into my closet, and settled in to nap.

That nightly nap turned out to be pretty not-boring, I soon found out.

It turns out ghosts can dream.

Sinking into ghostly not-sleep feels like falling into dark, warm water, only you can't feel the water on your face or warmth on your skin. It's more like sensing these qualities rather than feeling them. The dark isn't something you see with your eyes; it's something you feel with your brain, more like quiet than like an absence of light. The warmth isn't a kind of heat, but more like an insistent absence of cold; it's a softness, a muffled quality, one that dims awareness without extinguishing it, leaving me entirely alone. The difference between feeling and sensing sounds negligible, probably, but to me it's important—because when the qualities of my not-napping abruptly changed, turning from darkness to light and soft warmth to hard sensation, I need you to know how unmistakable these changes truly were.

In lieu of silence, I heard voices and music and the rush of wheels over a polished floor.

In lieu of darkness, I abruptly beheld the sparkling lights of a disco ball.

In lieu of muffled oblivion, I smelled sweet cake and felt a rough taffeta party dress scraping against my skin.

And instead of isolation, I became surrounded by people who loved me.

All at once, forged from the fabric of my sleep, I realized I had begun to dream—or, more specifically, that I had begun to dream the memory of a birthday party.

The roller-skating rink brimmed with children and their parents. Arcade bells rang and chimed; children squealed with delight as tickets poured out of the machines and into their eager hands. People skated in circles around and around the nearby rink, their skates' wheels whirring over the floor with a sound like hissing thunder. The nine burning candles on the cake before me cast warmth into my delighted face; my cheeks hurt from smiling, the nylon cord of a paper party hat digging into the skin beneath my chin, but I hardly cared because the people around me were singing. A dozen other children sat at a table beside and across from me, singing "Happy Birthday" so brightly it made the candles seem dim in comparison. And the boy beside me (the snaggle-toothed boy with the patched clothes and mop of untrimmed hair and eyes like roman candles) sang the brightest of all, holding my hand under the table as he warbled out the tune.

"Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you!" he and the other children sang. "Happy birthday dear—"

(If they sang my name, I couldn't quite hear it.)

"—happy birthday to you!"

And they all applauded as I blew out the candles, and the warmth of their love was so bright I could almost bask in it. But before I could tell them—these familiar faces I couldn't place, but ones I knew I loved as certainly as I knew this was my birthday party—that I loved them, too, my parents appeared. My mother stood on my left, and my father whisked away the cake for cutting before standing on my right. My heart swelled at the sight of them, and I wanted to tell them _I loved you and I miss you so much, I miss you so much it hurts, I can't remember your names or faces but I miss you like crazy—_

My mother held a long box, tied with ribbon, in her arms. She handed it to me as my father caressed my hair, the pair of them exchanging a loving smile above my head.

"Well, go on," my mother said.

"Open it!" said my father.

"Happy birthday, angel," said my mother.

"What's in the box? Show me!" said the snaggle-toothed boy at my side.

The other children demanded to see my present, too. How could I possibly deny these people whom I loved for what they asked? I tore the ribbon away, lifting the box's lid and diving into the tissue paper within without hesitation—but even before I saw what lay inside, my fingers skimmed its hidden contents, _and I knew._ I knew the minute I touched it what lay inside, and as I uncovered it for the world to see, my throat began to swell. I looked up at my parents in awe and in wonderment, smile trembling from emotion too pure to begin to name.

"You got it?" I whispered as my gift slid silken between my tiny child's fingers. "You really got this for me?"

"Of course, honey," they said, beaming. "Are you surprised?"

"This is _mine?_ " I pressed, hardly daring to believe it—because they had said 'no' when we saw my gift in a department store, scarf golden and bright on the neck of a long-limbed mannequin. They'd said 'no' to that coveted Hermes scarf, but here it was, in my hands and shining under the cheap lights of the roller rink. I pulled the scarf from the box and draped it over my hair, rubbing the fabric against my cheek. Breathless, I could only ask, "I can really keep it?"

They laughed at the question. They laughed and pulled me close, and I buried my face in my mother's side and smelled her perfume, trying to drink her in and remember this moment, always, as they told me they loved me and held me tightly to them, too.

The golden Hermes scarf wasn't the only gift they gave me at that birthday party, but as the dream of the memory played out, I found I couldn't remember any others. They were all overshadowed by the golden Hermes scarf, which I knew I'd wear every day from then on out until the very day I died. It was my favorite of all the gifts, and that day I wore it proudly around my neck as I skated with my friends. My friends gave me birthday gifts, too, and ate cake with me, and held my hands as we ran through the arcade and fell asleep in a pile while watching a movie on the floor of my parents' bedroom, scarf sliding cold and slippery and magical against my sleeping cheek.

The boy with the snaggle-teeth—my best friend in the world, I realized somewhere deep inside me—held my hand through the night.

Friends.

I remembered my friends, now—or at least, I remember what it was like to have them.

* * *

NOTES:

 _Her memory comes in bits and pieces, it seems._

 _Thanks to all y'all who chimed in last time. Would love to hear from anyone still reading, because you rock my world: Kykygrly, Deamachi, o-dragon, Blaze1662001, rya-fire1, Ink Outside the Lines!_


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